


Ruin

by IdrewAcow



Series: The Reason [1]
Category: Vocaloid
Genre: Blackmail, Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gen, Heavy Angst, Luka isn't a Good Person, Psychological Horror, Psychological Torture, Stalking, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2020-06-02 07:39:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 32,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19436920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IdrewAcow/pseuds/IdrewAcow
Summary: Luka thought that turning her somewhat weird hobby into a second source of income would be a good thing. And it was. At first.Part one of three in The Reason!





	1. Halfway There Already

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Here I am again with my last multi-chapter work that I'm crossposting from my Fanfiction account. This is a more recent project so I only gave it a once-over without correcting it too much. Still, am open to feedback, as always!  
> Please consider that this is part 1 of 3 of "The Reason!"

"Will follow you for money."

With the title finished, Luka pressed 'post' and sat back in her chair. Her computer screen illuminated her otherwise dark room with a pale-bluish light, the glare of it almost painful to Luka's tired eyes. She eyed her post, exhausted; it was two in the morning or so, and she hadn't slept in over twenty-eight hours. She had searched very long for the perfect place to publish it. Writing it took even longer: it had taken about a day on its own, just long hours of painstakingly choosing every word exactly for what she wanted to say, laying down the rules, and organizing everything so that it looked good. She had made it look professional. She had made it impossible to track it back to herself, avoiding personal information to the slightest detail. She had even made the effort to write in a style that wasn't hers, with short sentences and long words. After all, if she was to indulge in her practice and make money from it, she didn't want anybody she knew to find out.

The title said it all. She loved following people. She loved choosing a random person in the middle of a crowded street and stalking them to their destination. She'd arrive in the strangest places, find the best shortcuts, the most interesting people. If she lost her target, she chose another. But losing her target hardly ever happened any longer, not since she graduated, even though she sometimes needed to run, or even get a taxi. She grew confident, knowing that she would see her target 'til the end. Sometimes, if the walk was long, she entertained herself by guessing where they were going and why. Were they going home, or to an underground improv show? Were they going shopping, or to a BDSM dungeon? Were they picking up a child from school, or eloping?

Luka loved it. She loved every part of it. She'd been following people for five years: since high school had started. On that first day, she had no idea where the classes were, and followed her schoolmates around. As benign as it was, and as impractical as it was compared to simply asking for directions, she discovered that she got a kick out of it. Then she followed them home, and then she followed strangers literally everywhere. One day, shortly before her final exams, she'd followed one person all the way to another city. It had been the greatest adventure of her life. The stranger had gone to an airport, that Saturday night. Luka had purchased the plane ticket the moment she'd known where he was going and had followed him all the way to his home. It was thanks to that stranger that she'd found her current studio. And by Monday, she was back, and nobody had ever known that she had been to the other end of the country.

That was probably the best part: nobody ever knew she was there. Nobody knew they were being followed. Watching them walk or sit or drive just ahead, carelessly going where they needed to be, not knowing that they were bringing someone along with them was the best part. Maybe it was some sort of espionage thing. Maybe it was getting to feel somewhat like an omnipresent being. Maybe it was getting to taste a part of someone else's life. She didn't know, but she delighted in it all the same.

The cross-country expedition, in particular, had seized her. She absolutely had to return to the city she had discovered thanks to a stranger, a gift from an unknowing giver. Two months in her first summer vacation free of high school, she had moved there, leaving her hometown behind, able to bask in the feeling almost constantly; the first taste of the city was slow to leave. Even as she discovered the city thanks to other people, tailing them left and right, simply being in the destination from her biggest adventure enhanced every experience.

The move had been a surprise for her friends and family. Her parents, in particular, wanted her to get a job, and study law. Law — for Luka — had evolved into some sort of joke. After all, her favorite pastime bordered on the illegal. As for the job…

Luka closed her laptop. Maybe she could save up for a car, or a bigger bed, or a pair of curtains. She chuckled. Ultimately, it depended on the success of her post. She wondered if being followed was something that gave some people a kick.

Her stomach growled. Ah, it was probably best to think about the near future though, she thought, as she stood to cook herself some dinner.

Only half an hour later, Luka opened her computer once more. She checked her mail and was pleasantly surprised to find an email.

At first, she rolled her eyes; it was probably her parents, being worried sick about her potentially eating fast food or noodles for a week straight. She hadn't been moved in for two days, and they were already texting and mailing her hourly.

But no. An unknown sender sat there in her inbox. She opened the e-mail.

Someone wanted to be found and followed for two hours straight. Someone wanted to pay her a few hundred for it. Someone was also open to doing it again should it go well.

Luka chuckled. She replied.

"I'll find you. I'll follow you wherever you'll take me. But you'll never find me."

She sent it. Seconds later, her inbox welcomed a new e-mail. It included some information; a little, but just enough. It was signed off with a single word.

"Deal."

* * *

Luka whistled a tune as she folded her bed back into a couch. She was going to see her best friend for the first time in almost a year and was looking forward to it. With a bounce in her step, she went over to the table and picked up all of the paper and envelopes that rested there. After looking around for a few seconds, not knowing where to put the papers, she shrugged with a smile and shoved them between a couple of books. Then she emptied the sink, opened the window and made a last check for cobwebs in the corners of the room.

She wondered how Lily was faring; if she had any tales to tell of home; if she had a boyfriend by then; if she'd moved into a place of her own; what she was studying.

A loud unforgiving buzz rang through the room, making the pinkette jump; she wasn't sued to the aggressive sound, for hardly anybody ever needed to visit her. Shaking off the surprise, she opened her door and practically flew towards the front door with a wide grin.

The moment the door opened, the two girls greeted each other with loud, enthusiastic cries. They hugged, mixing together phrases like 'it's so great to see you' and 'how have you been' senselessly. While exchanging their pleasantries, Luka led her to her place, closing the front door behind them.

Luka entered her home with a semi-enthused 'ta-da!'. She knew that her studio wasn't impressive, but it was her place and hers alone; she felt proud for just being able to exist independently with such ease that it showed. Despite the nice furniture and sparkling floors, Lily stayed in the doorway, looking around with slight surprise visible on her features.

"Nice place," she said, all excitement gone.

Luka laughed, rolling her eyes at her best friend's words.

"It's a room, Lily. A studio. Technically, a loft. But it's supposed to be small," she said as she closed the door.

"Right, right," Lily continued looking around. Luka could practically see what she thought of the kitchen, composed of a stove which had only two hot plates, a tiny oven, a mini fridge and a microwave, all packed against a wall in three square meters. It was no luxurious setup by any means, Luka knew, plus it was better than what most could get, but she didn't like the thoughts she was reading on her best friend's face.

A small desk shoved against the fridge marked the transition from kitchen to room, which was just as sparsely furnished. Aside from the desk, there was the chair, a table and a couch, which was pushed under the window, against the far wall.

Luka chuckled humorlessly, sitting down on her couch.

"Yeah, I'm living like a king," she said dryly, hoping to pull her friend from her thoughts.

"It's a nice room," commented the blonde as she took off her jacket. "I mean— It's got lots of light, and you managed to preserve enough living space despite the lack of space you had to begin with."

Luka sighed at her friend's effort to compliment her home, wishing she could laugh at her poor attempt at masking her true thoughts.

"Having just a table, a chair and a couch help with that," mumbled Luka as her friend came to sit next to her. With a start, Luka realized that she'd forgotten to put away her laptop.

"I bet." Lily looked around once more. She could see Luka's entire home from where they sat, with the exception of the bathroom; the door, next to the front door, was closed. "How much is the rent?"

"Next to nothing, actually," answered the pinkette, quickly putting her computer away.

"Your parents helping out with that?"

"No, I got a job."

Lily gasped in genuine surprise, "No! Really?"

"It's not like I'm studying, you know. I phone people. Surveys."

She saw her friend flinch.

"Ah. Neat?"

"It's nice, actually. Don't have to do much. It pays well enough; I can eat."

They sat quietly for a few moments. Luka could feel the air getting heavy as she waited for the blonde to finally say what was on her mind.

"What's wrong?" she asked when she finally ran out of patience.

Lily sighed at the question.

"I don't know, Luka. You're a really bright, talented person. I always thought you'd end up being an explorer or an astronaut or something awesome. But this is the kind of place I expected to end up in, Luka. Not you. Yet, now you're far from home, in a room, with a desk job, and you're just twenty-one."

Luka was taken aback.

"And?"

"I guess I always saw you doing something better than this," as she spoke, Lily gestured towards the room. "Bigger than this."

"I'm happy, Lily!" Luka assured, sincere.

The blonde turned towards her, mildly surprised.

"Really?"

"Really."

* * *

Luka sighed heavily, unable to get the morning out of her mind. She was so happy to see her best friend again, at least before it had gone sour.

She shook her head; after that, it had gone better. They'd chatted, and it wasn't as if anybody needed an amphitheater to have a one-on-one conversation, so the blonde couldn't complain any more about her living quarters than she already had. Dinner was pleasant, too. Lily was studying geology, had a part-time job as a waitress, and still lived with her parents. There were a fair number of stories about Luka's parents because they had taken to visiting the Masuda residence since her departure. Lily said that her father's hair was going gray, which made Luka feel something between melancholy and nostalgia. A year was longer than she liked to admit, yet it felt like no time had passed at all.

She shook her head again, deciding that she had to focus. While she was talented at creeping around after sunset, her destination demanded her full attention.

There it was: four stories tall, narrow, dark, squeezed against the house next to it. A small alley to the house's left led to the back of the residence; it had a garden, just like all of the houses on the block. The walls were an off-white, the lights weren't on, the door was shut tight. She knew that it had more than just one lock, and she knew that every window was armed.

Luka sighed. She'd taken countless pictures of the place. By sheer observation, she had managed to map out most of the interior. Only a little bit more, and she'd know the place well enough.

A shiver ran down her spine. It was chilly out for late spring, and she wasn't wearing a coat. Only a long-sleeved shirt, a pair of leggings, gloves, and some gym shoes protected her from the cold. Her hair was tied back into a ponytail; she could feel the breeze on her neck.

She looked over her shoulder once, twice, then checked again. Only a little bit more till she knew how the whole place fit together. Unfortunately, that little bit more required a step that was not so little. The thought set her heart alight in a painful way.

Skillfully, she ducked into the little side alley. That wall of the house only had windows on the top two floors, so no need to hide from those. But she needed to be swift nonetheless; it was a quiet residential area, and any step too much could make all of her careful planning fall apart. The side alley stopped at a small fence which connected the two homes, stopping people from entering the garden. It was easily hopped over.

She avoided the soil and branches, making sure absolutely nothing of her could be left behind. No footprints, no snaps, nothing. Another chill ran down her spine, but the cold wasn't at fault that time. She could feel her heart in her throat, she could feel how her blood was being pumped down her arms and legs. It shook her, literally.

One glance at the backyard was enough; nobody was ever outside that late, private garden or not. Despite that, she hid in a bush and observed her surroundings.

Most of the neighbors had large hedges around their little backyards, effectively sealing themselves from the others. This house went even further: there was a fence of sorts, bamboo maybe, behind the dense shrubbery. But that didn't mean that Luka was safe from other prying eyes, or ears. If anybody was outside to inhale the cool evening air, she could be heard. She listened, quietly, as she gazed up at the back façade of the building.

A single light was on, on the third floor. Luka checked her watch; quarter to eleven. She looked back up, only to see that the light had gone out. Clockwork. Inhale, exhale, relax.

She waited another twenty minutes. Only if there was no new light on by then would she decide to move again. Until then, she waited, fully aware of her surroundings, feeling her fingers chill and her heartbeat slow. She breathed deeply, letting the chill sting of the wind into her nose and lungs.

No light. Admitting to herself that she'd waited long enough was enough to make her heart skyrocket, despite her best attempt to keep herself calm. Her fingers, cold, started trembling again. It wouldn't stop her, she told herself. Nothing will.

She crept up to the home, no longer caring about hiding in the bushes. There, behind some plants and conveniently de-thorned roses, was a grate which led to the basement. Normally, it would be bolted down into the cement around it, but normally there wasn't a regular visitor armed with tools who took pictures of the place on a weekly basis. Consequence: the bolts were long gone, and the grate was lifted with ease.

The stones crunched slightly as Luka jumped down the pit. She froze but heard no reaction of any kind. Even the wind had stopped. Gingerly, she put the grate back in its place. The soil falling in her eyes made the task difficult; the weight of the metal, the stress, and the cold made her arms tired. After a moment, it was secured in its cradle, so she turned to the window which kept her out of the basement.

No little black bug clung to the frame of the window, red light shining. It was the only unarmed window in the entire building. That was why she was there, it was her only way in.

She kicked her shoes against the wall, making absolutely sure no dirt would follow her inside. After double checking her ponytail and her gloves, she pushed against the window's frame.

It didn't budge. Of course.

Luka willed her heart to calm down. Just look at what kind of mechanism is closing it, she told herself. Just look, and worst case scenario, come back tomorrow with a plan B.

She squinted, trying to see inside. It was not so much the dark that stopped her from finding what she sought, but the awkward angle; she was tall, the window was not. She did not know how it worked, or what exactly she was looking for.

She quickly realized that it was a window that could slide upwards. If she was lucky, there would only be a simple plastic or metal device that stopped it from being opened from the outside. Where could it be?

When her glove touched the wooden frame of the window again, she realized that the paint was chipping. How old was this thing? Spurred by sudden excitement, she took out a thin but sturdy knife she'd brought with her and ran it under the window. It was loose on its hinges and hung away from the wall a bit. She wondered how much of a draft ran through the home because of it. She remembered that the residents probably didn't count on staying in that home for very long, which probably explained why they decided to simply allow the old window to stay, with the bolted grate as the sole measure of security.

As she ran the blade across the top of the frame, she met metal. There it was; she pushed against it and quicker than she had anticipated, it sprang loose. The window clattered, and whatever she had dislodged fell to the floor inside with several muted clangs. She waited with baited breath, scared to the core. She hadn't expected such a swift result, and hadn't expected the noise. But the home remained silent. The residents were dead to the world. Carefully, she tried pushing the window upwards. It got stuck, but after shaking it a bit, it finally decided to slide all the way upwards with only several rattles. Luka squeezed herself in and shut the window behind her.

The home was eerily quiet. She hardly dared to breathe. The basement smelled of damp laundry, dust, and rotting wood. Quietly, she picked up the broken mechanism; it had rusted through and through. She pocketed it, not wanting anything to stay behind.

She crept through the basement for a while; she wanted to know the place inside out. Most of the rooms were pretty empty, but none were locked. In one room, there was a washing machine, a dryer, a large closet, and a few boxes. It was the only room with a working light. In the closet, she found various summer clothes and shoes. It was full to the brim. Another room contained the boiler and quite a few pipes with dials. A plastic box on the wall indicated that close to no electricity was being used right then. A third room had a large rack with wines of all sorts against the far wall. All bottles had collected a huge quantity of dust, so Luka didn't even dare look at how old they were.

She didn't know what to feel about such an empty basement; even though it was clear that it was hardly ever visited, there was nowhere to hide, and whenever she let her foot fall a bit too loudly it echoed. Dust was everywhere, coating the floor, just waiting to catch her footprints. The more she realized that her environment only put her at a disadvantage, the more she ached to find a better room.

She already knew most of the layout of the other floors, thanks to her previous scouting and some logic. She knew that there would be a kitchen and a dining room on the first floor, and an office on the third, for example, but had no idea where she could possibly hide.

She tiptoed up the steps, feeling the air grow warmer as she went. Slowly, she opened the door, only to freeze when it creaked. Once again, she waited till she was sure that nobody had heard the noise of her intrusion. She checked the time: almost midnight. Even the father, who worked till very late, would be deep asleep at this hour. What she didn't know was how deeply they actually slept, and she wasn't about to go test their limits.

The door continued to creak and groan no matter how she tried to open the door. She tried everything between nearly imperceptible movement to a quick shove open. Both rewarded her with a high-pitched sound, one long and never-ending, the other a shrill shriek. At the end, the door was open, Luka was in the doorway, in the dark, waiting for a reaction.

Still nothing, much to Luka's relief. Her heart continued to hammer in her chest, though. After all, she was in a stranger's home, with no hiding places, and the only thing she knew of was that she was facing the west side of the building.

She calmed herself down and looked around. The home was fairly narrow, so the whole structure was built around its length. The northern wall to her right had the front door, framed by a closet, mat and a dresser. Then the space evolved, to her surprise, into something akin to a small living room; there was a couch against the wall, a few chairs, and a coffee table. A large clock and some fancy hanging shelves showing off porcelain kitchenware adorned the walls. This space was closed from the rest of the floor by a strange protrusion into the space, giving it the feeling of a nice and closed welcome space. That southern wall was braced by a spiral staircase, which led upstairs. The protrusion was its own little room, from what Luka could tell in the dark, and the side that faced her was directly in front of her, and also had a door. She took a single step forward, crossing what she thought was a hall of sorts, and opened it. She found a very simple bathroom, the simple toilet and sink combination. The ceiling of the room was slanted; the staircase, after the elbow, ran just above it.

Silently, she closed the door and turned towards her left. Exactly opposite the front door was the door that led to the garden. This door also played the role as some sort of marker; it separated the dining space from the kitchen. To the left of the door was a table and four chairs, the walls adorned with paintings. To the right, she found a fridge, stove, oven, and numerous cabinets and cupboards.

Luka opened everything, searching for any empty space. To her luck, she found an empty cabinet next to the oven, and after looking under the tablecloth she found a large hiding place between the four chairs, provided nobody sat at the table, of course. The couch in the living room was very wide and low, so with some effort, she could crawl under it and remain invisible. The stairs invaded the living room somewhat, and there was a cabinet under the steps. It was very small though, so she doubted she could go in there easily. She found nothing else.

She took out her notepad and scribbled down a reminder to bring oil for the hinges of the door to the basement; both the front and kitchen door had huge locks that she wouldn't ever be able to invisibly bypass, and the windows in the kitchen, which overlooked the garden, couldn't be opened at all. The basement remained her only way in and out, and the creaky door was her only obstacle.

Luka sighed, realizing that she was going to take the next step and go up the stairs. They would bring her closer to the living beings which she could wake at any moment. She had managed to forget them to some degree while she studied her surroundings, but now that she needed to go somewhere, she was reminded of where she was going, and what was waiting for her.

She steeled herself. She had already managed to break in, she had managed to go to the ground floor. One more, she told herself. At least one more. In some form of meditation, she checked her gloves and ponytail again.

The stairs were carpeted and made absolutely no noise. They were, however, narrow. Too narrow for comfort. Whatever light had managed to slip into the rooms behind her didn't manage to make it past the turn, so when she looked into the second floor's room, she was met by nearly perfect darkness.

She waited a few minutes in the elbow of the stairs to let her vision adjust. She prided herself in how well she could navigate in the dark, but knew her limits. Quietly, patiently, she sat down against the wall and stared into the black room.

Minutes ticked by. She could only hear herself breathe. When the refrigerator started humming, she almost jumped.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, she could make out various shapes. To her right, above the kitchen, was a proper living room, with more furniture. This also surprised her somewhat; such a room was usually used frequently, but she had hardly ever seen any activity in this part of the home before. There was even a fireplace in the southern wall, and the pale outlines of frames on the walls, which suggested a very welcoming and comfortable room. A large carpet covered the floor. She supposed that in daylight, it would look homely. The windows were closed for the night, however, and the shutters didn't let any light through.

Slowly, carefully, she walked between the various couches and chairs and tables in the room. Every one had spindly and long legs; none made a good hiding spot. A metallic grid covered the fireplace, and Luka decided it was too dark to try to figure out how exactly it opened.

She refused to look at the pictures hanging on the walls.

The northern half of the floor was an office of sorts, as expected. Numerous books about business, economy and the like covered the east wall. An abnormally large desk faced the windows to the north, but they too had light-tight shutters. Upon the desk were various books, and Luka thought she could recognize schoolbooks. What truly struck out to her was the paint on the walls; it wasn't that the painting wasn't well done, but it stopped at a certain point, and noticeably enough so that she could see it in the darkness. She figured that the room had been refitted in order to become an office. Briefly, she wondered what it could have been before. Maybe it left a few structural secrets behind?

Knowing this made her obsess over the room for a bit too long. She felt against the walls, pulled at the books on the shelves. The seam where the paint ended was too perfect, yet she couldn't find anything.

She wrote down that she had to bring some extra supplies on her next visit. The first item on the list; a small flashlight. Maybe one with an almost-empty battery, or with adjustable intensity. Then she wondered how easy it would be to find the original blueprints of the home. Another item on her list was a measuring tape. There was something about the room, she knew it, and she was set on figuring out what it was. After all, what she didn't know will hurt her.

The stairs emerged a meter or so into the room, so it was fitted with fences so that nobody could fall into them from the sides. The following stairs to the third floor were next to them, also fenced off. She didn't like the fact that on the first floor, the stairs had been moved into the corner of the mini-living room without guards, and suddenly on the second floor, there was this grid, and it was all that separated the stairs from the rest of the space, not to mention that it was the only thing that separated the two different rooms from each other. Because the division wasn't as opaquely obvious as it had been downstairs, she could see from one room to another. She was unhappy from a practical point of view: on the first floor, she could hide in the kitchen without being seen from the front door, but on the second floor, she could be seen from anywhere. Only the desk made a decent hiding place, except the chair took all of the space under it. And of course, the design choice didn't fit her tastes: why a fence? There could have been walls or curtains, or another bathroom to mimic the first floor. It was useless to complain about the lack of taste in the design, of course, so she pressed on, hoping to find a better hiding place.

Luka pushed past the anxiety from going up yet another floor and simply went upstairs. The stairs continued to be carpeted, luckily, so there was some consistency. The third floor was as dark as the second, which didn't bother the intruder in the slightest by then.

She was startled by the sudden change in layout: until then, the stairs had spiraled somewhat, intruding into the living space. But there, in front of her on the third floor, she saw wooden steps leading up to the last floor, sticking out of the eastern wall. They were very narrow and hardly as intrusive.

To Luka's right, she found another office. Windows were on the western and southern walls, and a light was on the desk; that was the light she had seen over an hour prior. This was the office the father worked in, she knew. On the eastern wall, she found more books in a custom built bookcase, so that it would fit snugly under the steps. The was no strange paint on the walls and no uneasy feeling about the room, no schoolbooks, and there was a large desk under which she could hide. The theme of the books remained economics, plus a dash of politics. A single framed picture sat next to a shut laptop.

Just like with the previous floor, a fence made sure that nobody in the office could accidentally fall down the stairs. But, unlike the previous floors, the other room on the floor was totally cut off from the office and stairs alike by a large white wall. More books covered some parts of the wall, and in the middle of the wall was a door.

Luka feared it might be a bedroom. She knew that the father was home, at the least, and he was probably right there, behind that door.

Her heart rate skyrocketed; only a door kept her from a man, and only a door kept that man from the intruder.

She forced herself to breathe. He hadn't heard her till now. His desk looked smaller, but the chair was different, so she could hide there if she absolutely had to. Despite the little mantras she told herself, all of which were meant to be reassuring, she couldn't shake the fear. She couldn't and wouldn't open that door. Not that night.

She checked the time: a little over two o'clock. She had spent more time than she had expected in the office on the second floor. The room, remembered, bothered her anew. What was wrong? She couldn't quite put her finger on it.

Luka then turned towards the last staircase. She figured that the third floor hadn't been that bad, so she could go for the whole house in one go.

Unlike the rest of the house, she had no idea what to expect on the top floor. It was too high up to properly observe from outside, but she could presume that there would be at least one other bedroom up there, with some living space.

Contrary to the spiraling stairs, the last set wasn't carpeted at all and creaked ever so slightly when she applied too much weight to the outer end of the steps. So, she hugged the wall until she reached the last floor.

Instead of being greeted with open space, she met a door. She was facing southwards, and could only imagine that the door was just far enough from the southern wall to be able to open.

Slowly, she pushed the door open, and found that she was right; she saw the southern wall, and through the nearest window, the garden. She had to stop to let herself adjust to the light a second time: the faint moonlight felt like a searing burn to her eyes. It didn't take nearly as long as getting used to the dark, so less than a minute later, she crept into the room and closed the door behind her.

She turned to be able to see the rest of the room. It was large and open, and in the northeastern corner she saw another protrusion; Luka supposed that it was another bathroom. Large windows were present on all four walls of the room, giving the entire space a blue aura.

It was so open that Luka suddenly realized that she hadn't ever thought of the possibility that there was motion detection security in the home; all of the windows were armed, as were the doors, so why wouldn't they have detectors? She hadn't spotted any, but technology allowed those things to get tinier and harder to find. Maybe there was a silent alarm? Maybe the police were on their way at that very moment, since she stepped into the basement?

She shook her head, calming herself; she'd been in the home for more than two hours by then. If the response team for this security was so slow, then this family wouldn't trust it, and wouldn't have it. Yet, for the home to be so airtight from the world, but to have no motion detection? It confused her.

She noted down the detail in her little book. It was food for thought. Then she resumed her analysis of the room, hoping to find some refuge in its open space.

More books lined the western wall, interrupted by windows. The middle of the large bookcase contained a stereo sound system. Upon inspection, she found that it was hooked up to devices that allowed whoever used it to play back records, cassette tapes, CD's and had a dock for various mobile devices. Impressed, she moved on to inspect the books, only to find fantasy and romance-oriented stories. A wide, soft carpet covered the middle of the floor. A large loveseat and a huge chair were placed around it seemingly haphazardly. The eastern wall had two bookcases filled with CDs, records, and movies, and between the two there was a desk with a pretty nice computer. To the back of the room, in the northwestern corner, there was a bed.

Luka froze. There was a living being in the same room as her. Immediately, she felt vulnerable. The entire room was far too open and uncluttered, she had nowhere to hide. She couldn't even hope to dash down the stairs because they creaked. The more she thought about it, the more fragile and exposed she felt.

But the other person didn't know she was there.

Luka calmed herself, which took quite a few minutes. Then, slowly, she approached the stranger.

Next to the bed, she found a small nightstand with a small lamp, a notebook, and a digital alarm clock. The nightstand had a drawer. Quietly, without even sparing a look towards the sleeping human being, she opened it to find a smartphone and some mp3 player, both charging. Luka wondered what kind of engineering allowed the wires to run into a drawer before berating herself for getting distracted. She shut the drawer and turned towards her victim.

Luka stifled a gasp. She recognized the girl, and it almost broke her heart right at that moment. She'd only seen photos of her when she was, what, nine? Now she was seventeen or so, she remembered. What was her name again? Miku.

Luka stared at her for a long while. At first, it was curiosity. What did she look like? Oblivious. She was dead to the world. She was vulnerable. She was in her home, trusting that her walls would keep her safe. And now, a stranger had managed to creep out of her basement, all the way up to her bed.

At first, it had been curiosity. But it evolved into simply drinking the feeling of power, control, and guilt. Luka stared at her victim, and yes, she knew that even though she wasn't going to do anything to the girl, she was most certainly a victim. Luka was in this girl's home. Luka was in her room. Luka was in her private space. Luka was right next to her! And she didn't know! It didn't help that the girl was just that, a girl! She was a minor!

Luka shivered as the guilt mixed with self-disgust, the feeling of power and control fading away. She decided to keep to a professional mindset and continued inspecting the room.

The bed was high enough to hide under. It was probably the only good hiding place in the entire room. Luka didn't like the fact that her only refuge was right under her threat. She moved to the bathroom, hoping to have more luck.

The bathroom was illuminated by the moon a hundred times; the light bounced off of the tiles infinitely. The setup was extensive. She had a bathtub, a separate shower, a vanity covered in a large range of makeup.

Luka inspected the makeup; there was a lot one could learn about a girl from what kind of makeup she used. She found everything she knew about and more: foundation, mascara, eyeliner, lipstick and gloss, something called primer, eye shadow, rouge, concealer, lip liner, blush, pencils of various sizes and colors, a few bottles of perfume. She only ever used the classic mascara and lipstick, and she knew she could rock both. So, what kind of person was this? Miku had looked quite nice while asleep and makeup-free, making Luka question why she needed so much.

Also, there was the fact that she knew that Miku never left the home. She had nobody to impress. The large collection of books, the extensive music, and the nice computer were Miku's everyday distractions.

But the makeup could be a distraction too, right? Luka inspected various tubes and sticks and bottles to find that everything had been more or less used to some extent. Even makeup had become a pastime. Luka's heart broke a little more as she wondered how lonely the poor girl was.

Carefully, she made sure that nothing looked like it had been touched. Unfortunately, even though the bathroom was richly furnished, it was possibly the worst room in the entire house; everything was white or cream, the glass in the shower was just too clear, and everything was against the wall and the edges met the floor at a right angle. Nothing to crawl under or behind. Luka felt like she was miles away from any hiding spot.

She left the bathroom, closing the door behind her. Now that she only had to backtrack, she had to make sure she left everything exactly as she'd found it.

Miku's room really was large, Luka realized. It would take her a couple of seconds before she could reach the door if she ran. She noted that the girl's desk could pass for an emergency hiding spot, but only if the room remained dark.

The girl suddenly turned in her sleep, making Luka freeze. When she realized that there was no immediate threat, Luka relaxed again, but her heart continued to lash against her ribs. She was everywhere she shouldn't be. She was doing everything she wasn't supposed to be doing.

Slowly, she crept back to the bed. Miku was facing the wall, still holding tightly to the covers. She was oblivious. So oblivious.

Luka wondered how the girl had spent her youth 'til then and would continue to live her days. Holed up in a home, meeting nobody, never going anywhere.

She was, Luka figured, her total opposite.

Her heart ached for the girl who was caged in the room Luka had so swiftly managed to sneak into. Miku would never know Luka was there. She might never find out that there was a way out. She might never know that, just out there, was such a huge world filled with beautiful things and disgusting intruders.

Luka repressed a sigh and left the room. Slowly, she made her way back downstairs, not touching anything, not changing anything. As far as the family was concerned, she never was there. She was a ghost, an intangible witness to their sanctuary and their slumber.

She did wonder what she had to do with the broken piece of window. Could she risk coming back with it later and gluing it back on just for looks? Was it worth it? On one hand, the room it came from wasn't used. On the other, all she needed was one slip up, just one person to notice that it's gone for only a day before they lock it properly. There was absolutely no way that Luka was going to risk her only way in. What could she choose? Take it with her and throw it away, or put it back?

Luka decided to give them the illusion that nothing had changed. She put the metal object back in its place on the window, hoping that whatever remained of the rusted screws would be enough to keep it in place while she opened and closed the window as she fled the scene. She'd glue it the next time she visited.

After placing the broken lock back in its place, she carefully opened the window and climbed back outside. When she didn't hear any clattering after shutting the window, she could only assume that all had gone well. Then she lifted the metal grate, climbed out of the hole, replaced the grid, erased her footprints from the soil, kicked her shoes, and left the garden.

She went home.


	2. Introductions

Luka closed her front door with a happy sigh. The day had gone well: she'd followed some stranger halfway across the city, and learned quite a few shortcuts. The more time she spent in the city, the more she knew it. She felt that at that point, her knowledge of the streets and alleys was borderline intimate, and she hadn't ever looked at a map.

She was surprised that being followed was an actual kink some people apparently had. Her post wasn't resoundingly popular, and it didn't pay as much as she had truly hoped, but every now and then she had a big client with strange requests and loads of cash. One such request was that she made her presence known through reflections in windows, opening doors, and the like. It was a tall order, and it was difficult to fill: normally she avoided being seen. She had donned a hoodie because she didn't want to be recognized. He was quite happy nonetheless. Another request was that she take pictures of the person she followed, to prove that she was tracking them. Photography was not her strong suit, but it was more fun than she had expected. She was swift with the small camera, so much so that nobody ever saw her take a picture.

She wondered if people came in from different countries just to be safely followed, sometimes. One email, poorly translated, requested that they meet in a large old house. She'd stalk the individual through the halls. Maybe it was a horror film thing, she wondered.

Ah, but she was certain of one thing: because of the versatility of the requests, she was slowly becoming an expert stalker in every setting, weather or location.

* * *

Luka had no idea where to find blueprints for a home. She even wondered if it was legal to know the blueprints of a building she didn't own. Her mission was a delicate one, so she quickly decided that she wouldn't even try asking around for that kind of information; before she knew it, the family made sure it would be inaccessible, and the moment someone tried to find out, that someone would get arrested.

Luka decided to simply go on with her list of things she had to do, and forget the blueprints.

The rest of her list was truly an amalgamation of easy-to-find things; measuring tape, flashlight, oil. The flashlight had adjustable luminosity, the tape was over ten meters long, and the oil came with a little pipe for easy, spill-free application. All were relatively tiny, so she could fit them in a small bag she would sling over her shoulder and keep under her shirt.

She made sure that her materials were ready for that evening; she hadn't been back to the house for two days and wanted to be sure that she wouldn't forget anything. Just as she put the small bag down, she remembered to bring glue. She figured that regular glue would do the trick, so her everyday household glue went in the bag as well.

She wondered why she hadn't returned right away. After all, the longer she left the broken lock in place, the more likely it became that someone would find it. Maybe she was waiting for an article, or a sign that they knew that she'd been there. She was, of course, beyond nervous. The mere idea of having to go back there made her shake and sweat. She didn't want to go back to that bedroom; she didn't want to be so vulnerable; she didn't want to do it.

Staying calm helped her collect her thoughts. She could do it. She would do it. She'd return that day.

Her phone rang, startling her more than she would like to admit.

"Hello?"

"Hello, Luka!"

The young woman immediately recognized her mother's voice. With a soft smile, she wedged the phone between her shoulder and her ear, knowing it wouldn't be a brief chat.

"Hey, mum. How are things?"

"Oh sweetheart, it's so nice to hear you again. It's been a while since you called!"

Luka rolled her eyes, silently sighing as she answered, "Yeah, I'm sorry about that. I have a full-time job now, and that's been taking up a lot of time."

"Yes, Lily phoned us about that earlier."

Luka stopped herself from scoffing, but did take the phone back in her hand. "Is that so?"

"Yes, she called us as she was waiting for her plane to Europe. She's worked for months to be able to get this vacation. It's unfortunate you two haven't been able to spend more time together."

"Yeah," Luka answered halfheartedly, freeing her hands again.

Luka carefully chose her clothes for that night as they spoke. She hesitated between two black shirts, wondering which would be best; wool or acrylic?

"So, you're working an office job, calling people?"

She paused, detecting the tone in which her mother spoke, "Yeah."

She chose the wool.

"Luka, didn't you always love to sing? Or history?"

"History was always a hobby of mine," answered Luka, knowing fully well by that point that her mother felt much like her best friend did. "I was afraid that studying it too much would take the fun out of it."

"Right, but—"

"And you told me yourself that music is hopeless to pursue," Luka finished, unable to keep that last grain of bitterness off her tongue.

"Right."

A heavy pause followed. Luka was used to this, and let her mother think as she laid out her clothes on the bed. She checked her watch; she had to go in about an hour. It was already quite dark out, and she didn't want to let the night get too old before she left.

"Are you happy, Luka? Lily said you were happy."

Luka picked up a letter she had on her table, quickly skimming its contents before putting it back on the table.

"Don't worry so much, mom. I'm happy."

* * *

There she was again. The home came into her view as she approached it with even steps. No rush, just breathe, she told herself. Just breathe.

She slipped into the garden unseen, but her heart had started to protest once more. She wondered when she'd get accustomed to it all.

The light was already off when she arrived, making Luka curse. She checked her watch and noticed that she was late. Luckily the man was very punctual, so she knew when he'd gone to bed. Twenty minutes later, with no sign of life, Luka crept towards the basement.

When she tried to push the window open, she heard the lock clatter to the floor. Her heart didn't waste a second to return to its race, and Luka was petrified. The noise had been so incredibly loud, and the stupid thing had bounced multiple times!

But nobody came.

Luka sighed, easing the window open with a bit more finesse. She crept inside and retrieved the broken lock. Ten minutes and a bunch of glue later, the lock was back in its original location, rusted through and through, broken and useless. It sure did look reassuring, though. A nice little illusion of security.

Luka pocketed the glue, wondering how long her visit would last. Would she stay long enough for the glue to dry enough for a quick and silent exit?

She crept up the stairs, acting too quickly for her heart to keep up, not giving herself time to freak out. The hinges of the basement door were on her side of the door, as it opened inwards. Quickly and quietly, she oiled the hinges, hoping that, if they did notice that the door was suddenly being quiet, they'd chalk it up to the changing weather or something. Maybe they wouldn't notice at all, but Luka could only pray.

The door opened, totally mute. Luka didn't bother with the first floor and sped up the stairs with the lightest steps to go the mystery office.

It had changed a bit; books had moved around, and a laptop was suddenly on its surface. Luka turned on her flashlight after making sure it was set on the lowest possible luminosity.

For all intents and purposes, it was just an office. Of course, there was the paint and the strange impression the room gave her, which was why she was there. What was the impression, exactly? She stood there for a long while, trying to taste exactly what the room was giving her. She felt somehow very focused on the desk? No. It was more of a suffocation, she realized. The desk was very big in the room, she felt, and the walls were too close to the working surface.

Luka studied the desk. Was it simply a very large desk? If that was the case, then she'd feel silly. Suddenly, a thought struck her; she'd seen this desk elsewhere! She backed away from it, trying to remember where she'd seen it. Then she dashed up the stairs, touching nothing, making no sound, and looked at the father's desk.

It was identical. The desks were nothing special; something from a large-brand store that was designed for easy building. But they had two identical desks.

Luka noted that in the office, the room's walls were much less invasive. She took out her tape measure, measured the width of the room, then crept back downstairs. The room was much more narrow than the rest of the building! The home was pretty geometric; a huge, somewhat narrow, block. But for some reason, the walls of that office didn't span the entire width of the building.

Luka observed the other walls on that floor and noted that the second-floor living room, on the southern end, was as wide as it was supposed to be. Then there were the stairs and their stupid little gates to prevent anyone from falling down them. But after the stairs, the wall was once again 'too soon'.

The intruder briefly wanted to laugh at such poor designing. Who would have built anything in this way? But that brief desire was taken over by a different realization; maybe that wall was hollow.

She wanted to knock on the wall to test the theory. But she couldn't, she told herself. The noise would resonate through the home if it really was hollow. She'd have to find other evidence of it, she thought. But curiosity got the best of her, so she pressed her ear against the wall and very, very delicately rapped her knuckle against it.

Results were inconclusive. Disappointing.

She looked at everything the wall had to offer; all of its corners and seams and everything that was put in front of it to see if it was there to hide something.

It looked like a stupid, normal wall.

Luka refused to give up; if it truly was hollow, then her entire task would be so much easier than she could have ever dreamed! It was a possibility she had to entertain until she would be absolutely certain that it was dead.

She went down the stairs, hoping to find more clues on the ceiling under the wall. If she found nothing there, she would be forced to sneak into the father's bedroom to inspect the floor there, which she absolutely wanted to avoid.

To her surprise, she noted that even on that floor, the room was narrow. After a quick check with the kitchen, she concluded that indeed, the rooms to the north of the stairs were all narrower than they were supposed to be. What a lucky discovery, she told herself. If all northern rooms had a hollow side, then she could potentially creep behind the walls on four floors! But how could she get behind the walls?

Luka then remembered the cabinet under the stairs. It was very difficult to find the last time she was there, but with her flashlight, she could more clearly see the wood stand out from the texture of the wall.

She felt around the edge of the little door, hoping to find purchase somewhere. No luck. Luka cursed herself when she realized that despite her planning, she'd forgotten her trusted knife. Quietly, she crept to the kitchen to find one, doing her very best at making absolutely no noise. Unfortunately, the drawer had a quick or auto-shut system, so the moment it was almost closed, some mechanism brought it back to a fully closed position with a jolt, making all of the silverware rattle.

She almost stabbed herself in the sudden panic. Luka didn't take a single chance and ducked under the couch only two seconds later, her heart pounding out of her chest.

Her nightmares came to life when a light turned on; she could see the shine on the floor in front of the stairs. Luka wanted to cry; the adrenaline was making her shake. She silenced herself in every which way that she could; no breathing, no shaking, no dropping anything, no sticking out from under the couch, no thoughts about being shot or things she'd forgotten to put away or being assaulted or being in the newspapers or her cellmates.

Someone came down the stairs very gently, and Luka bit her tongue to stop herself from whimpering. The couch was good, she told herself. The couch was a good hiding spot. Quietly she pressed herself against the wall, away from the stairs, hoping her beating heart wouldn't betray her.

From where she was, she could only see two relatively small, bare feet pause at the base of the staircase. Luka immediately deduced that it was the daughter. The girl had quietly come down the stairs, almost soundless. Luka wondered if she truly was there because she'd made a noise, for the girl didn't seem to be looking for anything.

The pair of feet disappeared before the girl turned on the kitchen lights, and sometimes Luka could see her unknowing host's shadow stretch out on the floor. There was a small clatter of pans, a fridge opening and closing, pouring, and the fridge again. Then silence.

Luka waited, adjusting to the situation. She was quickly convinced that the girl wasn't there because of the noise. Soon, she heard something cooking, a soft boiling of sorts. The girl stirred whatever was simmering. If she wasn't there because of noise but because of a midnight snack, then Luka wondered if she would have gotten caught without her self-scare. The girl was so quiet; she wondered if she would have heard her coming at all. She considered thanking her luck before she saw the kitchen light turn off. She heard a chair being pulled out and assumed Miku had taken a seat at the dining table. Unfortunately, the protrusion the bathroom created meant that couldn't see her, so she could only guess what was happening.

She heard sipping; Miku had made something hot to drink. Tea, or warm milk, perhaps? That would have justified the stirring and why she had needed to open up the fridge.

Luka then wondered if this was something that occurred regularly. She also wondered if that was why they had no motion detectors; Miku was usually up at night. It was, at that point, merely a guess, but the possibility of Miku having light sleep was a great risk for the intruder. That or being awake often was something Luka would carefully have to dance around and avoid at all costs. But the girl was so incredibly quiet! How could she possibly see her coming if she was to avoid her?

She did turn on the lights, Luka noted. If she remained alert, then she would be able to notice her arrival before she saw her in person. But would it be enough? Would she have enough time to hide quietly?

Luka gulped nervously; this new element in the game was one she couldn't joke around with in the slightest. And somehow, it made her feel somewhat sad for the girl; she'd experienced light insomnia before, during the tedious moments in school. She knew that being unable to sleep or being unable to keep sleep could become, at moments, utterly maddening.

At least the tealette seemed to have her method of coping, thanks to her warm milk. Luka had been stubborn and had kept tossing and turning until she was too mad to be tired, or too tired to be mad.

Luka then wondered why she hadn't ever taken note of Miku's insomnia before. After all, she had been visiting regularly, in order to take pictures and get a good idea of the place. Of course, back then she never stayed beyond midnight, which might justify why she hadn't ever seen the daughter turn on the lights. Then again, maybe this was a singular occurrence. The possibility that this behavior wasn't a habit was a comforting one. But the girl's gestures, the way she had crept so quietly down the stairs, the way she'd prepared her drink so swiftly and chosen a seat so directly only suggested that this was something she did regularly. Maybe she usually woke up later in the night?

As Luka pondered the details of the late-night drink, Miku had finished her beverage. The intruder had heard the sips stop, yet the girl remained seated at the table. Luka heard no noise of a chair being pulled out. She heard no noise of any mugs being put away, nothing. She waited for a few long minutes, and got nervous to the point of looking around in the partially lit room to see if the girl had somehow managed to sneak out and up on her. But Miku was still seated at the table, and she sat there in total silence. Luka almost wished that there was a clock somewhere that made noise. Only the humming of the refrigerator provided some audible input. Otherwise, it was eerily silent. That, coupled with nothing happening, gave Luka the impression that the entire world had paused.

She exhaled shakily, forgetting for a second that remaining undetected was the first of all of her priorities. She remained unheard, she remained hidden, and Miku remained still.

The moving hands on Luka's watch were the only indication of time passing. The girl had been downstairs for almost forty minutes when she decided to go back up. In an almost groggy fashion, she put the mug in the sink before rinsing it thoroughly. The light switched off, and only the light from the upper floor remained, reaching down from the narrow stairs. Luka briefly saw Miku's feet again when the girl left the kitchen and dining area, walking around the bathroom and then up the stairs. Despite being barefoot, without making any real effort to be quiet, she was soundless.

Mere seconds later, the light upstairs turned off. Luka waited another minute, even believing that she heard the girl when she ascended the last set of stairs. Then she waited and waited some more.

She didn't like the fact that Miku was awake. She didn't like the assumption that she had trouble going to sleep or staying asleep. She remembered how close she'd been to the girl just a few days prior and shivered at how bad it all could have gone.

It had been an hour since Miku had gone down the stairs and a little less than twenty minutes since she'd gone back up. Still, Luka didn't feel safe enough to crawl back out from under the couch. She listened to herself exhale, each breath shaky, the dust sticking to her cheek. Her neck hurt from looking forwards while lying down on her stomach. Her heart felt so tired. She was so tired.

She remembered her mission. She remembered the room, and the hollow, and the cabinet under the stairs. She breathed deeply, then slowly, slowly crawled from under her hiding spot.

Everything was dark. Quickly, Luka went to the kitchen to see if she had left a clue of her presence. There was nothing out of the ordinary, and the only thing that had changed was the pan Miku had used to boil the milk, which sat in the sink. There were still a few drops of milk in the pan, which made it doubtlessly clear to Luka that the girl was trying to fall asleep.

Still shaking a little, Luka returned to the task at hand, hesitating only a little bit. Should she wait more? Should she return the next day? In the end, she decided to try and see how far she could get without testing the girl's slumber too much.

With the knife she'd gotten from the kitchen, she managed to pry open the door. As she worked, Luka realized what a terrible impression she would have made if Miku had found her, knife in hand. Of course, intrusion wasn't bad enough, she would have looked like a potential murderer as well, and murder was the very, very last thing on her life's agenda.

The cabinet was empty, much to Luka's understanding. Not only was it difficult to open, but the inside was raw, splintered wood. Never had it been prepared to actually house or store anything. Luka wondered if it was so difficult to open because it was supposed to be closed for good. At least its hinges were quiet.

She stuck her head in and shone her flashlight around. She could clearly see the steps from under, and the whole wooden setup to make them stable. The wood that held the stairs up was new, which probably explained why it was so soundless. But the walls and the seemingly random beams were raw and ragged.

The space wasn't small, though. It followed the stairs up to the elbow, stopped by a splintered wooden wall. Right there, under the elbow, Luka felt she could almost sit comfortably. The opening of the cabinet was, however, barely wider than her shoulders and right against the floor.

Luka decided to crawl in anyways, eager to find whatever she could. She managed to do so with only some difficulty, the main challenge being the necessity to be absolutely quiet. If that wasn't her priority, she would have managed to crawl into the space in a matter of seconds. But with no frantic wiggling allowed, no pained grunts and only carefully calculated movements, it took half a minute. Once inside, she realized how stuffy the air was. It smelled like wood and dust, the air was dry. There was a hook of sorts on the inside of the cabinet door, which she used to shut the door behind her. The moment she did so, the darkness was absolute.

There she was, under the stairs, blind, on her knees and hands. Luka didn't feel particularly vulnerable; nobody would ever find her there, and that thought alone comforted her more than anything. Unfortunately, the ground was littered with splinters and dust and dozens of fragments of things Luka didn't want to imagine. She felt it all get stuck in the fabric of her gloves and her pants at her knees. She hoped that there wasn't any glass, or fiberglass, or anything that cut too deeply. Or anything dead.

She turned her flashlight on, taking a few minutes to simply look around. The newer beams were really new; they still seemed to have that freshly polished gleam. The older beams were jagged as could be, and she even spotted a few old nails sticking out of the edges. Luka gulped, seeing the nails as an invitation to death by carelessness. If she were to stab herself in that space and die, nobody would ever find her body, and the family would forever wonder what stank so much. And if they did find her one day, they would be scared to death seeing the remains of an adult in their under-stair crawlspace. Luka shivered, more determined than ever to simply stay alive.

Carefully, she crawled 'til she was under the elbow of the stairs and sat up. She wrote down that she would have to bring tools to remove or at least neutralize the nails, because she could definitely see herself returning to this hiding spot many, many times.

Ah, but she had gone out to seek the answer to the potentially hollow walls. She directed her flashlight in the direction of the wall, namely right in front of her, when she had her back pressed against the wall under the elbow of the stairs, facing North. She could see the outline of the steps, as before, turning and going higher before disappearing behind the wall. She wondered why she hadn't noticed the structural anomaly sooner; from the outside, the western wall was totally flat, with the exception of the chimney which started on the second floor. From the outside, the stairs went up and beyond the wall of the room, sinking more westward than the room did. Of course, there had to be a hollow.

Unfortunately, she only saw more wooden walls, threatening her with their splinters and nails. She approached where the hollow had to be and tested the wall. It held firmly. She directed the light upwards, towards the floor above. Ah! There, she saw only a few boards haphazardly nailed across a gap in the structure. She stood as much as she could, which was more like a strange kneeling, and shone the light through the gaps. She could see a large dark space, almost entirely empty, stretch up two floors. It was barely wide enough for Luka to be able to stand in there comfortably.

With calculated movements, Luka tested the wall separating her from the space again. It held. She pushed again, harder, then harder still. It complained, and something broke with a muffled groan. Oh, how lucky she was, that the wood was so old! Carefully, she pried the wood away from the beams that held it, pushing against the surface where the nails were as she saw them emerge.

It was a work of patience. After the initial jolt, the top of the surface had sprung away from its frame by a fair centimeter. Then she pushed against the bottom, but it did not jump again. Slowly she eased the nails out of the frame, pushing the slab of wood until it stuck away from the beams evenly. Then she went around it in a circular fashion, keeping it all even, going as slowly as she could bear.

When the first nail sprang free, she continued more carefully than ever. Then another nail left the frame with a jolt and a groan, and another. Luka could then hold onto the board, and pushed until it fell.

She was so proud of her work; she'd manage to push away what separated her from her goal in almost complete silence. It had taken her far too long though; almost half an hour, and she was sweating from the effort. The dust clung to her skin. But she smiled.

Quietly, she managed to maneuver the board through the opening she'd created to rest it against the wall in the elbow of the stairs, nails facing away from her. Then, with a hop in her step, she crawled back through the opening and stood in the hollow of the walls.

She felt like cheering. In one night, her entire mission had gotten infinitely easier. She hardly cared to question why the walls had been placed the way they were. After all, who did care? The family didn't notice, and it only worked to her advantage! Maybe it was an aesthetics issue, maybe it was a footprint issue, maybe the designers were insane, maybe there was a terrible stain on the old wall and they could only build a new one in front of it!

Luka killed a laugh before it escaped her. The outside wall was smooth, much like the walls inside the home. It hadn't been painted, but she couldn't care less. The other side, the side behind the walls the family saw on a daily basis, was simply a ton of little planks of sorts placed horizontally with gaps between them. It was like a very, very wide ladder with only two-centimeter space between the rungs. Stuck to the other side of the planks she could see the plaster or cement or whatever made the wall.

Oh, she was literally behind the scenes, she realized. Nobody would ever, ever find her there. From there she could operate as she desired, night or day. Yes, she could haunt them all day as well, if she so desired.

It would require massive cleanup if she wanted to spend an extended amount of time there in comfort, she thought at first. But Luka didn't have the time or patience to vacuum clean or dust or polish any of the space right then. She decided that the mission was more important than her own comfort, and she would use the space as frequently as possible, dust or no dust.

She checked the time and decided she would better start heading home. Still giddy, she ducked under her makeshift door, crawled under the stairs and emerged with some difficulty out of the cabinet.

Dust was everywhere, she realized with a grimace. Calmly, she searched for a broom (she put back the knife while she looked), found one, then pushed all of the dust in the corner behind the couch. Nobody would find it there, and if someone did, they would assume that it had simply been waiting, gathering there for a long time. In any case, it was more discreet than a sudden pile of dust in the garbage.

She double checked to make sure that she hadn't forgotten any details. The cabinet was shut, her borrowed tools put away, and nothing betrayed the fact that she'd been there. Then, silent as a mouse, she went down to the basement, checked the lock. The glue had dried and the rusted mechanism wouldn't budge. With her flashlight, she inspected it further. Her tinkering was invisible, which made her feel very proud for a second. It looked like a regular old lock. She hoped that it wouldn't inspire the family to change it. In any case, it looked shut and permanently so.

Feeling very productive, she left the home. As usual, she made sure that not a trace, not a footprint, not a trail of dirt was left behind. She was never there.

Her walk home allowed her to reflect on what she'd discovered. The hollow was definitely a wonderful find. She wondered if she would have ever found it if that desk hadn't seemed so abnormally large in the room. If the family knew about its existence was another question, and she realized that it was a very good possibility. While their move to that house was supposed to be temporary and secret, they had made sure to secure all exits they knew of, and had probably inspected the old blueprints. Or, maybe they had the modification done themselves. No, she changed her mind; they wouldn't have wasted their time, the money or the attention on that. They wanted to be invisible, so hiring a bunch of people to renovate a home from the inside out would have been very counterproductive. But they could know about it. They might have forgotten about it. If Luka planned on using that space to her advantage, she would have to stay careful.

Miku's visit to the kitchen was a detail that Luka had almost forgotten in her excitement. And the detail was one of significant importance; if she truly was having trouble with her sleep, Luka would use the crawlspace pretty often, even at night.

Luka sighed, imagining the girl seated at the dining table alone in the middle of the night. She hadn't seen her sit down, but she could imagine her slumped over the table, or resting her weight on her elbows. She had been so quiet for so long, Luka imagined her staring at the wall in front of her, absentmindedly holding the mug, letting a skin form on the surface of the milk. Maybe she didn't use the ear of the mug and simply wrapped her hands around it, letting the heat burn her so that she could feel something. Maybe she was imagining conversations, or her father or her mother sitting across from her. Maybe she was conjuring up imaginary friends, could-be schoolmates, the boyfriends she might have had. Maybe she was thinking of a passage of a book she'd read, thinking of those fields of war or prairies of peace and calm she would never be allowed to visit, thinking of those comrades adventuring through the wild lands, the strange encounters, the epic battles. Things happening, finally happening.

And then she had put her mug away, she went up the stairs, and returned to her cage at the top of the magical tower, and continued waiting.

Luka sighed again, oblivious to the surprisingly cold wind. It was all so sad, she thought. She hoped that she wouldn't have to witness more of Miku's restlessness, for she feared it might shatter her. Right then, walking through the night, through the city, knowing all she needed to know in order to live and survive, employed and free, she felt so limitless, so liberated. It was a feeling that had started to escape her, she realized, and savored it. So free, so free. And Miku, so caged.

Luka returned home, closing and locking the door behind her before she drew the curtains shut. Only a single light shone in her room. She felt exhausted, all of a sudden. Right then, she needed sleep. Everything else, thinking included, could wait.


	3. Let's Do Battle

Luka happily stared at her screen: her savings in her bank account were looking good. She'd been in town for almost a year, and she was getting close to being able to get a car. Not a Ferrari, of course, but something that could drag her from one location to the next. Her savings were entirely composed of what she gained on her little jobs. She survived thanks to her actual, legal job; she worked at a desk, behind a computer and microphone, calling people to ask them questions. She didn't mind in the slightest that she spent half of her day trying to establish communication only to have client after client hang up on her. After all, it limited her hobby to evenings and nights, which made everything infinitely more interesting. She was getting used to the dark and knew all the best and worst streets, day and night. She was truly becoming an expert and she loved it.

One of the tabs in her browser flashed: she'd received a message. Two clicks later, she was presented with an unusual request: to follow someone who was not the sender.

She sighed: she'd stated in her post that she only followed people with their consent. She wasn't a private investigator in any way, shape or form. She typed that reply before going to browse different vehicles online. After a minute, she wondered if it would be worth waiting another month or two for a better car before her email flashed again. Same sender, a reply to her reply, and only a number was typed.

She couldn't believe what she saw. She hesitated a second. Only a second.

"Deal."

* * *

The hollow of the wall was bound to be incredibly useful. After the initial discovery, Luka returned every other night, carefully removing any superficial nails and bending over the tops of those she didn't dare pull out. She sprayed silicone spray on the edges of the cabinet to make sure it opened smoothly and noiselessly. Unlike the basement door, the hinges weren't the problem: that frame was just far too small. Then she carefully shoved the dust to the corners so that she didn't have to clean up after herself every single time she left. It took two weeks to make it almost habitable.

During that time, Miku hadn't manifested again in sleepless unrest. But after those two weeks, Luka had decided to make a full schedule of what the family did all day and all night. She needed to become unbelievably familiar with their habits if she were to operate smoothly. She was to become omniscient.

The day after the hollow was more or less clean, Luka brought in a small pillow and a book to camp there all night, every night. She slept after she came home from work, forgoing dinner, and moved into the crawlspace at midnight. She stayed up all night long. It messed up her sleeping cycle, which proved to be devastating for her day job. She couldn't care less, though; her present task was more important and ultimately more rewarding. At first, she left around four in the morning, not knowing when the family woke up. She'd go home, sleep a little, and then go to work. As the days went by, she left later and later, in sections of fifteen minutes. One day about a week after her first stay overnight, just as she was closing the cabinet door at six in the morning, she heard commotion upstairs. Her heart jumped to her throat and Luka fled to the basement, just barely getting the door closed behind her as the father went down the stairs. She went on unnoticed, luckily.

Over the course of that week, she had realized that Miku did indeed wake up frequently, but only later in the night, usually around three in the morning. She always made herself milk, and her longest stay downstairs was an hour and ten minutes, her shortest twenty minutes. It made Luka's heart ache, and as she wrote down her findings, she felt almost guilty.

After the near encounter with the father, Luka decided that she needed to find out what they did during the day as well. Luckily it was weekend the next day, so that Friday night she slept till four in the morning. She fought the feeling of jet lag and moved into the hollow mere minutes before the father woke up.

He ate breakfast alone and left the home at six forty-five on the dot. The man was a machine and Luka appreciated his reliability. Miku was much less regular, but Luka couldn't blame her. She would wake up in the late morning, eat alone, and spend the entire day in her room. She never went down the stairs unless she wanted to eat, which was usually around dinner time. She never had lunch, probably because she had breakfast so late. So Luka spent her entire Saturday in the hollow, waiting for something to happen, but only hearing sporadic activity from the upper floor. Sometimes, she played music on the stereo, but she never turned up the volume loud enough for Luka to distinguish the lyrics. Sometimes, she thought she could hear Miku singing along.

Miku was probably as bored to death as she was. Except Miku didn't know that she wasn't alone.

Whenever that thought struck Luka, she felt incredibly powerful and she hated herself for it. She was learning everything about this girl's routine. She already knew everything about her father's routine, so what could stop her? She knew them, she knew their home, she knew their lives. And they never knew she was there behind their walls, listening, watching, learning.

The father returned at eight in the evening. The two had dinner together in a semi-lively conversation. It was so obvious that Miku was happy to see her father and it almost brought Luka to tears. Her father, though, could only dream of matching her enthusiasm. His answers were short, emotionless. Then, after dinner, he went to his office and worked. She went to her desk and did work as well. They worked apart, on separate floors, facing opposite cardinal directions. Dinner was the only moment in the entire day that they actually saw each other. Then Miku would go to bed sometime between ten or eleven, while the father left his desk at exactly quarter to eleven. They would fall asleep, and Luka would leave.

She saw this happen both Saturday and Sunday, both days carbon copies of each other. But the workdays returned, and Luka was forced to go to her day job. She wondered what they did during the day, if there was a single day when the father actually stayed with his daughter, or if she was always so painfully alone.

It was essential information, but she hesitated. It wasn't until a week later that she actually quit her job so that she could learn all. From that point on, she could stay over the course of the entire day, all week long. It was a blessing to return to a regular sleeping pattern; she hadn't realized how much of a toll the irregularity had taken on her.

Getting used to the crawlspace for regular stays was another matter. While the temperature remained relatively stable, the air remained dry and oftentimes Luka would wake up, feeling like she was suffocating. A sleeping bag and a pillow were her new bed. No mattress was a true nightmare to get used to. She also had a reserve of batteries: she used her flashlight so often it ran out of energy frighteningly quickly. But thanks to the space, she could be a constant vigil. An uncomfortable vigil, but a vigil nonetheless.

After only a day she had realized that the workdays were identical to the weekends. The father would leave early and return late, and Miku would stay holed up in her room, and work at her desk in the evenings.

One evening, Luka decided that she knew enough, that her hiding place was safe. It was time to start acting, to work towards her new objective. Once again, she waited all night long, battling sleep with a thermos of coffee and a Sudoku, or a good book. Miku would, as expected, rise and make her milk in the very early morning. Luka almost didn't move, almost did nothing, but she saw time go by and the envelopes on her desk. Her heart rate, once again nervous, made her shake. She swallowed her fear, and brazenly knocked on the wall.

Miku jumped; Luka heard her chair scrape against the floor. But she didn't say anything. Luka hesitated; she couldn't hear the girl walk no matter how hard she tried; it was always the kitchen's pans and cabinets that betrayed her presence. Was Miku walking around, or was she still at the table? Soon, she heard her take her seat again. How shaken was she, really? She knocked again, on a different location on the wall, closer to the stairs, so that it sounded closer to where the girl was. Miku jumped again with a startled peep. Luka heard her put the mug down somewhat roughly, and decided that she'd done enough for her opening act. She sat down, totally still.

Maybe Miku had looked around the room for a minute or two, or maybe she had remained there until she was sure that she was alone in the room. Either way, soon Miku had put her mug away and had run up the stairs.

It hurt Luka to hear her run, to hear her move at all; her steps were suddenly heavy on the stairs, and Luka had heard them groan for the first time. She even heard Miku's door shut.

The intruder sighed quietly, but steeled herself. She'd continue. It was worth it.

She continued like that over the course of the next few weeks. Her sleep pattern shifted again, sleeping only when daddy was there and when everybody else slept: between eight in the evening and three or four at night. Sometimes, she'd knock on the walls when Miku was alone, startling her. She could tell that Miku was starting to feel insecure, but she never mentioned the incidents to her father. Luka wondered how much farther she'd have to go. So she pushed the limits a bit, knocking louder, reaching up across the floors available to her, making the illusion that the ghost was following her, for she knew where the girl was.

As the days went by, Luka became more and more confident as she realized that Miku truly never left her room. She allowed herself to quit her hollow and turn on a sink a little, letting it run enough to be noticed but not so much that it was a truly abhorrent waste of water. She moved the dining table or shoved a chair. Every day she did something different. Then she'd knock on the walls and quickly duck under the closest hiding spot if the hollow was too far.

Miku would notice. She'd go downstairs to prepare dinner and set the table, and pause when she saw the sink or the table. Luka heard her spot the remains of her activities when she was in the crawlspace, she saw her freeze when she was under a couch.

Somehow, it still wasn't enough. She wouldn't mention the strange happenings to her father. Luka then decided to make her ghost manifestations a 24 hour per day issue, hoping that would suffice. She no longer cared about her sleeping pattern and decided she'd forgo sleep altogether if that was what she needed to do. She started at night, and knocked a few times on the wall or scratched against the planks. In the morning, after her father's departure, Luka unhooked a few paintings or pictures, or quietly set a table on its side. She acted on all floors except the fourth one, where Miku practically existed.

The midnight knocking stopped because Miku stopped going downstairs altogether. She would only descend the stairs for breakfast and dinner.

But she still said nothing to her father.

The ghost needed to do more. But by then she was already sleeping only at odd intervals, going home every other day to check her mail and write letters. If that didn't suffice, then she decided to become a true nightmare. If Miku wouldn't go downstairs, Luka would go to her. While the girl worked in the evenings, even though her father was home, Luka reached up as much as she could and knocked against the wall of Miku's workplace.

You're never safe, Miku, she hoped to say. Daddy can't keep you safe. But despite her never-ending haunting, no matter how much she moved the furniture or moved the paintings or misplaced objects, Miku would quietly put them back and put up with the noise and never, ever mention anything to her dad.

Luka realized that she hadn't ever managed to breach into Miku's cage, which had started to become the girl's haven. Yes, she would have to invade Miku's private space, her room, her sanctuary. But Luka hesitated. She'd only been in the room once before, and no longer knew when the girl was awake. She knew that there was no hiding place in there, so she wondered when she would approach, if she could at all.

By then a few months had passed. The haunting pushed into the summer. The crawlspace remained wonderfully cool despite the warm weather. When the second week of August rolled by, Luka finally found the courage to enter Miku's room in the middle of the night.

The room had hardly changed; the chairs had shifted somewhat, but that was it. Miku slept soundly, or seemed to, in her bed. Luka decided to close the door again and knocked on it quietly. If the girl was awake, she would have heard it. There was no response, so she stepped inside the space, keeping the door open behind her, just in case.

Miku was fast asleep. But she was different; she was curled in a tight ball, facing the wall. And all of a sudden, Luka was faced with the consequences of her actions, and it suffocated her for a moment.

She remembered her mission. Quietly, she crept into the bathroom. Quietly, she made her makeup look as if it's been struck and placed all of the tubes and sticks and brushes around the bathroom. Quietly, she crept back out and made the chairs face the girl. Then she decided to go a step further and placed them right next to her bed, making it look like two people had decided the sit there and watch her during the night.

Luka thought that it was enough. She refused to look at the girl again. Just think of the mission, she told herself. She retired back to her crawlspace and waited to hear a reaction.

The father woke up at six, as usual, and left forty-five minutes later, like clockwork. Three hours later, around ten o'clock, she heard Miku scream. Aside from her muffled conversation that Luka had heard through the walls and that one surprised peep the second time she'd knocked, that was the first sound she'd heard her make. It was the loudest Luka had ever heard her.

And then, a new sound managed to trickle through the walls, down the floors and into the hollow. Miku was crying. Luka bit her lip and put in her headphones. Her job. Think of the job. Surely the tealette would tell her father about her ghost now, wouldn't she? She had to.

But she didn't. After her initial shock, she'd probably put the chairs back, put her makeup in order, and continued with her day. Except she kept moving around all of a sudden. She didn't stay put no matter what. When she read a book, she changed seat with every page. If she was browsing the web she changed which outlet to power her laptop every ten minutes. It made haunting much more difficult that day, with such unpredictable movements, and it almost made Luka relieved.

Except she didn't tell her dad. She'd simply smiled, happy to see him, they'd eaten, then they worked and went to bed.

Luka was so defeated that she couldn't do anything at all for the remainder of the evening. She remained frozen.

That night she went home and called her parents. Her dad asked her why she had quit her job, and she said that it wasn't making her happy anymore. She's found something better, she said.

* * *

Luka sighed. She'd been home for a week, gathering her thoughts. She was seated at her desk, trying, in vain, to write a letter. She was too distracted by Miku's stubbornness. Why wouldn't she talk, ever? Why was her ghost to be hers alone?

After sealing the envelope, she packed her stuff and went to bed. Even though she had had a week to get reacquainted with her mattress, her back still melted into the soft, comfortable surface. But she would wake up early the next day and return to her hollow to haunt.

She wondered what more it would take. She didn't want to talk to her through the walls. She didn't want it to get too personal, and communication was all it took to get too close to someone. More 'pretending' that something is there watching her? More theatrics and sound effects and moving things? But Miku bore the brunt of it all so bravely. Luka hoped that the week of repose would lure the girl into a false sense of security and that crushing it would break her.

Luka couldn't sleep no matter how hard she tried for many hours. She wondered about Miku, the lonely, scared girl. The girl who smiled only for her dad and who worked only in the evenings, who had all day to do anything but who could do nothing. The girl who never went to the garden, who never answered the knocks, who started to make more and more noise as she walked through her own home to become her own ghost-chaser.

Luka fell asleep far too late and woke up far too early. But not early enough, somehow; it was with a jolt that she realized it was already nine o'clock and that Miku was probably awake as well, roaming the house.

But Luka had to return that day; she'd left the tealette alone for long enough, and needed to bring back the fear, the paranoia. If she returned any day later then she would have missed the chance to nab Miku while she was vulnerable; hopeful that the noises do not return, but still fearing them just enough.

Luka packed frantically only to calmly walk towards the house. The streets were busier than she liked, but still managed to duck into the alley without being noticed. The backyard was tricky, as she had to sneak herself past the grate in absolute silence, otherwise, she could attract the girl's attention if she happened to be on the ground floor. The garden had also become a trap of its own: backyard parties became popular as the temperature increased, and summer barbecues had become a terrible obstacle. She was lucky she didn't move often during the day.

Once she was in the basement, she felt safe again. The intruder had gotten used to the stressful fear of being discovered and her heart didn't panic as much as it used to. She crept up the stairs, used to feeling the air grow warmer.

Suddenly, she heard singing. Her father was still home! She checked her watch; it was almost ten o'clock, August the 31st. Not a particularly special day, as far as she knew. Why was he still home?

She pressed her ear against the door, then her heart dropped to her stomach.

It was Miku's birthday.

Luka backed down the stairs in a state of subdued panic. She shook her head, forgetting that this day was a thing, realizing that she's forgotten for far too long that Miku was a person, a human, a girl, a minor, and she was hurting her. A birthday… Her birthday! Her Day! How could she have gotten so mission focused, so information thirsty, to the point that she forgot that Miku was a person?! The guilt filled her to the brim and Luka could barely breathe.

She calmed herself, gathering her thoughts, feeling her heart hammer in her chest and seeing her own fingers shake. Her legs felt numb and boneless. She wanted to collapse against the wall and give it all up.

She couldn't. She shouldn't. She had to continue.

The family had finished singing and Luka could only hear the quiet conversation through the door. She heard Miku's voice, the father's, and a third voice. That was new! Luka crawled back up the stairs, forcing the guilt away. She swallowed it down, a huge brick that hurt her throat and crashed into her stomach. Think objectively, Luka. Focus, just a little. She adopted a rigorous mindset, put on a mask for herself, and just breathed for a little while.

The mission. Nothing else. She repeated it to herself, like a mantra, until she felt ready to proceed.

She was thankful that the basement door opened inwards and that it had been totally silenced. With an outstretched arm, hiding in the shadows, she opened the door just a bit and looked through the gap.

She could see the dining table with a little bit of effort. She saw the father's back, a bit of Miku's side, and next to Miku was a woman. Her mother? Luka had wondered where she was. She was probably the one who went abroad often. How kind of her to come home for her daughter's birthday, but to abandon her the rest of the year?

Luka frowned. She felt trapped in the basement. She could, of course, stay where she was and observe through the narrow opening, but she felt too easy to find and didn't have a nearby hiding place. It would be impossible to get to her hollow wall unnoticed. She'd have to stay in the stairs and hope that there was absolutely nothing in the basement they would need to go get.

Presents? Luka realized that they could have hidden things in the basement because Miku only ever went to the room where laundry was done. She dashed downstairs and checked the rooms and found a few wrapped boxes with the wine. She thanked her foresight and went to hide in the laundry room, hoping that the chore wouldn't be even considered during this festive day.

She waited a long time, almost an hour. Finally, someone went down in the basement to get the presents. Luka felt the goosebumps cover her as whoever it was walked past her room. There was so much in those few seconds that Luka could barely comprehend what she was even feeling. What if she hadn't thought about the gifts in the first place? What if she had chosen a different hiding place? What if that person had decided to enter the laundry room? Simply too many possibilities existed which allowed her to be revealed, she could have messed up in so many ways, and she could have been mistaken in her predictions far too often. It all gathered within that handful of seconds, those few footsteps, the one unblinking moment. Then, whoever it was left the basement, and closed the door behind them.

Luka evacuated everything within her with one deep, deep sigh. She had been too scared to even shake. After gathering her thoughts and pulling the mental mask back on, she somehow summoned control over her limbs and went back up towards the door.

There was more partying, and at some point, the family got a bit emotional. Miku would thank her mother for a trinket from another country, or her father for remembering a comment she'd made. Despite the parent's absent behavior, they truly seemed to care for their daughter. There was laughter and cheering sometimes. Then they remembered, together, a few of the vacations they'd had, the places they'd seen, the people they'd met. It went on like that for hours on end. When they all left the dining room to go outside and sit in the afternoon sun, Luka was suddenly left with just herself, as numb as she could ever be. Seated on the first step, leaning against the wall, hiding behind a door in a home she was intruding, she realized that she was crying.

She was deeply sad.

Despite that, she snuck out of the basement and quickly settled back into the hollow wall. Even though the family was just outside, she knew she was swift enough. What was once a challenge had become a simple routine. The irregular sleeping patterns, the staying behind a wall for days on end seriously dented her diet. Add all of the practice she'd gotten, and she could get in and out of her sanctuary within seconds in utter silence.

Her sanctuary didn't protect her from herself, though. She could still hear the sounds of the family's happiness. But she blocked it all out, swallowed her emotions, directed her thoughts to the task at hand.

She needed to break the happiness swiftly. She had to do it before the parents left; their common presence could loosen her tongue.

But she couldn't manifest in front of the parents; her haunting was for Miku alone, she'd decided. If the parents saw what she did, then they would probably call legal forces. She needed to scare the girl, she needed to scare them away, and Miku needed to be the reason they left. If she was 'lucky', she could convince the parents that their dear little daughter was mentally unwell, that she was seeing ghosts. They would go abroad for the best treatment there is.

What could she do while they were all outside? Heart racing, she left her sanctuary and went to Miku's. She moved everything a little. The desk wasn't against the wall, the bed covers were shifted, the chairs were turned towards the door, the mirror in the bathroom was tilted, the books were set on the floor haphazardly. A corner of the rug was folded over, the stereo was unplugged and set on the desk.

The moment she was done, Luka looked out of the window and made sure they were all still in the garden. Certain that they would stay there, Luka went back down to the ground floor and hid away.

Miku never commented on the state of the room. She'd simply bid her parents good night, closed her door, and put everything back.

She didn't sleep well, though. Neither did Luka, who woke up when Miku was in the kitchen. This startled the intruder; it had been weeks, months, since the girl had gone downstairs on her own. She was once again preparing warm milk. She felt safe once again.

Luka gulped; was the scene in her room not enough? Did she feel so confident? Maybe she'd overestimated how scared she'd made Miku, and the tealette had probably been comforted after the consecutive days of rest.

Luka berated herself; she'd failed to break her. It was time to go back to basics and remind her that she wasn't alone. She wouldn't ever be left alone again.

Just as she was about to knock on the wall, she heard a door close upstairs. She froze. Soon, the voice of Miku's mother was heard in the dining room. They talked in quiet, hushed voices. Even if Luka pressed her ear against the underside of the stairs, which was the closest to the two women, she couldn't make out what they were saying. Despite that, she could distinguish their mood, how they were speaking. Miku seemed sad, melancholic, while her mother showed regret or seemed to wave some issues away. Every now and then Miku got a little bit angry, and she would raise her voice a little. But nothing indicated that she was talking about the mysterious noises or things moving. Luka expected outrage or worry if the mother were to hear that, but Luka heard none.

They talked for a long time, before going silent. Luka wished she could see something, anything of what was going on. Just as she considered moving away from under the stairs, the steps groaned under the weight of the two women, making Luka jump. That was probably the closest she'd ever been to anyone in that house; their feet were mere centimeters above her head, and only a wooden plank and a rug kept them apart.

They would probably never know that someone was under their stairs as they had ascended them. They would probably never know how close an intruder was to them. They would probably never know that someone was living with them in their home.

Luka waited, hoping that they would fall asleep soon. After an hour of patient waiting, she pushed open the cabinet door without making a single sound and crawled out.

The moment the cabinet door was closed again, Luka started up the stairs quietly. When she arrived at the fourth floor, the intruder wondered if she had to knock to make sure the girl was asleep. But she felt uncertain; the parent's bedroom was too close for comfort, and while the father slept like a brick, she didn't like the fact that the mother was also awake so late. Maybe Miku had inherited her sleepless nature from her, and she didn't want to test the possibility.

So, knock or look? It was dark out, but the window was by the door, and even moonlight was a good light source.

She decided to tempt fate a little and opened the door very slowly. There wasn't a single noise in the entire household. She was scared to breathe.

Gently she peeked around the corner to see if Miku was awake. Her form was lying the bed, curled in a ball, facing the wall.

Luka sighed through her nose and stepped inside, leaving the door open. Miku didn't move, seemingly oblivious to her presence. The intruder hoped she truly was.

Briefly, she wondered how to scare the girl. The chairs weren't enough, the whole dismantling of her makeup arrangement wasn't enough, nothing was. She spied the girl's computer on the desk, still open and logged in. The screen's brightness was at minimum, its luminosity hardly comparing with the moon's.

This gave Luka an idea. She opened a word document and typed two words. She hoped it would be enough. It had to be.

Just like that, she left the room on her tiptoes, leaving behind her own wish of 'Happy Birthday'.

Luka decided to sleep through the night, thinking that there would be plenty to study the next day if the mother was home. Maybe things would change, and Luka absolutely had to keep check of that. Her sleep was uneasy, though. When she woke up, it was to the sound of Miku wishing her mother a pleasant trip. There was crying and hugging and more crying, and Luka found herself disappointed. She was leaving so soon?! And she left quickly, too; within moments Miku was once again alone, for her father had left, as per usual, at six forty-five.

Luka knew immediately that Miku hadn't told her mother of the message on her computer. Maybe the girl hadn't even noticed it yet, but the intruder doubted it.

She silently swore. What would it take?!

She gave Miku two hours of peace. Then she knocked. Miku hardly seemed startled, and Luka detected some form of denial. She knocked again. Miku went upstairs, and Luka quickly took down the paintings again, and opened cupboards. She hid under the couch when Miku returned.

The girl had frozen at the sight of Luka's modifications. Then she turned around, again and again, before running up the stairs, running through the home. The intruder took advantage of her absence to disappear behind the wall and heard Miku go back downstairs and clean everything up, before sobbing with all her heart.

Father returned in the evening. Luka knocked against Miku's office wall while she worked. Luka moved her furniture as she slept. Luka knocked against the wall when she went to prepare milk. Luka cleaned up behind her when she abandoned the task and fled back upstairs. Luka turned on sinks, switched around photos, rearranged the furniture, reoriented rugs, switched off the lights, pulled out the fuses, unplugged computers, put shoes in the cupboard and plates by the door, drew little smiles on her bathroom mirror, set the table for dinner, switched the salt and the sugar. She scratched and knocked and groaned from behind her wall. She switched and replaced and hid objects. She turned on and off and broke and repaired.

And she did so for months.

But Miku never talked.

Luka grew numb.

November was cold. The leaves were all gone, fog hovered over the city constantly. The moon lit up the fog, turning it into a giant spotlight of sorts. Luka sat in the garden, against the wall, behind the rose bushes. Distractedly, she was again taking all of the thorns off of the branches, simple maintenance, but as her mind wandered her hands simply stopped moving.

She wanted to go home. She wanted to go home and eat, sleep. She wanted soup and a hug. Something warm, something comfortable, something effortless. She looked up and observed the fireflies as they danced in the air, trying to keep track of their tiny bodies as they flew around in the dark. Stupid flies. She turned her head and heard the party happening just next door. The lights were on, the people were loud, and somehow neither helped her. The light, yellow and blinding, somehow managed to find its way past the bushes, past the fences, dotting the dark garden with gold. It was as if the grass was a sparkling dress and the fireflies a shimmering necklace for an invisible woman Luka could not see. So many pretty things, even the entire world, were right in front of her, but Luka had never felt so isolated.

She'd tried everything she could dare to try. Anything more direct would require her opening her mouth or showing her face. She'd tried it all, again and again, but it was never enough. Miku never peeped. She never complained. Her parents didn't know of the ghost that plagued their daughter.

And Luka had tried so hard. She'd become so good at what she was doing. Miku's nomadic behavior, once a real hindrance, had become just another thing to dance around, a new tool to work with. Even as Miku went up the stairs Luka would go down, even as Miku looked around Luka hid.

But it wasn't enough. She had become the god of the household, yet it wasn't enough. And suddenly, she couldn't even go home, because the neighbors just wanted to hang out with their friends and family, have fun, have one last party before the winter settles in.

"You have no power here," she mumbled with a sad laugh, quiet enough for her voice to be drowned by the party's laughter.

The only tool that Luka hadn't totally exploited, she thought, was Miku's bedroom. Of course, she'd invaded that room to hell, turned it upside-down, trashed it once beyond recognition. But maybe she could do more?

But it was rare that she even dared enter Miku's room. Luka had been there one night, sitting in one of the chairs in the middle of the room, staring at Miku's sleeping form from only a few meters away. The laptop had been, as usual, on and logged in. Sometimes Luka wondered if the girl had been filming herself in her sleep, but it never was the case. Maybe she didn't think she'd actually catch anything on camera. Poor fool, thought the intruder. If Miku had thought of filming her and gone through with the idea, Luka would have been caught red-handed. But apparently, surveillance never entered the poor girl's mind.

So Luka had sat there, watching the girl sleep. It had, again, been months since Miku had made herself a mug of milk, it had been months since Miku only fell asleep around three in the morning no matter how hard she tried. But it was the first time Luka had paused to reflect, staring at her.

What would it take? How long would this go on? How much longer would Luka have to pay rent for a room she hardly used anymore? How much longer would she have to lie to her parents and her friends as she answered letter after letter?

Luka groaned at the memories, at the questions that kept returning. At that point, the girl had become little more than an annoyance. The mission was taking too long, the girl was too stubborn, and the task was becoming too challenging. Luka had been at total ease, sitting there in the open, because she knew everything she needed to know. She knew that the girl would wake up at ten thirty, judging from the time at which she fell asleep. She knew that Miku wouldn't open her eyes, even if that was all it would take for Luka to be discovered. She knew everything.

But she didn't know how to break her.

Luka groaned again, so close to the party but so far from the entire world. She plucked at the thorns with some more vigor, more rage, before deciding that she would just camp in the Hatsune residence for one more night. The grate was set aside, replaced, and she disappeared into the home.

Going up and down the residence had become a walk in the park. She knew the time, she knew that everyone was dead to the world, the home was hers'. Yet…

Luka paused as she passed the room with the wine. She briefly eyed the door. Those bottles, gathering dust in a dark corner of a silent home…

Luka shook her head and continued up the stairs, up to the next floors, all the way to Miku's room. No knocking out of fear, no peeking. She knew that Miku would be dead to the world for the next hours if all went well, and considering how regular her pattern had gotten, she could count on Miku's sleep as much as she could rely on her father's punctuality.

She pulled up a chair and sat down right next to the teen. The intruder didn't even know why she went there, why she stared at the girl. Maybe she wanted to find answers. Maybe she wanted to just sit down with someone for a little while.

Miku had been suffering a nightmare, the pinkette realized with a slight start. Her blankets were disheveled and her expression was uneasy. Luka could only frown at the sight. Nightmares, of course. Miku could get nightmares but she couldn't convince her parents to just leave. She sighed, not bothering to stay silent. The whole affair had truly become bothersome. This little eighteen-year-old was a chore.

Miku whimpered, and Luka half-heartedly considered hiding under the desk, should she wake up. But Miku faced the wall again, hugging a pillow she'd taken to sleeping with, and grew still again.

Luka relaxed fully once more, leaned against the back of the chair, staring at the girl as she slept, hoping that observation would bring her some semblance of an answer. But no matter how much she stared, she found nothing. Miku's blurry dark silhouette conjured no answers. Luka wanted to throw caution to the wind and give up, but bit her lip.

There had to be something.

Slowly she stood and stared at the girl from above. Miku was so tiny, when she was curled into a ball. She was hugging the pillow tightly, burying her face in it. Luka couldn't see what expression she was making, if she was having a pleasant dream or if the nightmare continued.

In any case, Luka was making progress, if Miku's sleeping was any indication. The pillow-hugging was relatively new as far as she could tell, what with the frequency of her visits, so maybe she'd break soon. That was the only thing that gave the intruder strength to keep trying. Miku wasn't neutral. She was being heavily affected. She'd break soon.

Suddenly Miku rolled over, making the blanket slip from her form. She faced Luka, her face was no longer pressed into the pillow. Luka sat down in front of her and noticed the crease in the girl's brow. She looked so worried when asleep, almost angry. The intruder remembered how the girl had slept all those months prior. She was so relaxed, face at peace.

Luka frowned at the crease. It would become permanent if Miku pulled that face all night every night. And she looked so tense; her jaw was set and there was a small scowl on her face. Her fingers disappeared in the pillow because of the strength with which she gripped it. Miku probably woke up with a thousand aches. Her mind was probably plagued by a thousand fears. Yet, she never did anything. No attempts to leave the home.

Luka wondered if that was because she was taught not to do anything no matter how much she hated something. Her whole life she was holed up in various houses, moving around to her parent's whim. Was she submissive, passive in all ways? Yet she smiled so dearly for daddy and mommy, she tried so much to make them happy. Had they forced her into a never complaining silence?

For the first time in weeks, months, Luka felt her heart crack a little. Yet she refused to be guilty, to feel guilty. The mission, the mission…

But the crease on Miku's brow was growing deep and Luka hated it.

She was so sick of the never-ending task, she was so mad at Miku's stubborn submissive nature, she so hated the crease that in a swift, soft movement, she brought up her hand and rested her thumb between Miku's eyebrows, smoothing over the skin there. Her other fingers rested on her forehead, a feather-like touch.

And all of a sudden it hit Luka like a brick to the face. No matter how light the touch, it was the first time she was in contact with another person in months. Ever since she'd quit her job, even. She'd forgotten how it felt, to be in physical contact with anyone at all. The onslaught of emotions made her go slack, somewhat, releasing thousands of tension points of her own, and all she could do was stare at where her finger touched the girl's forehead.

She briefly considered pulling her hand back. She was too tired, she thought. She was letting her emotions get to her and she was starting to fuss over useless details again. The mission, the mission…

But the girl relaxed as well.

With widening eyes, Luka watched as slowly Miku's jaw dropped slightly, her features growing soft. Her death grip on the pillow loosened, her fingers emerging from the deep canyons she'd pressed into the fabric. And she felt how warm Miku's head was, how smooth her skin was, how soft her hair was. Suddenly the little annoyance became a girl again, her victim, a suffering human.

And then she sighed.

Luka had kept perfectly still, watching as the rigid structure before her melted into a puddle. And suddenly she recognized that face from months before, back when she was still seventeen, so young and bored yet happy in some monotonous way, so free of worry. Free of her.

She pulled her hand back, seeing that the crease had disappeared, that all of her worries and nightmares had been washed away by only a simple touch.

Luka watched, amazed. She'd erased the mark she'd made on the girl. She'd erased the very scar she'd inflicted.

She stood, her head spinning. She couldn't look at that face, she couldn't let it get to her, she couldn't forget.

Miku shivered, and Luka couldn't help but notice that it was a cold autumn, and even in summer, Miku slept with her blanket covering her from head to toe. Luka's hands were shaking for the first time since… She couldn't remember. Miku's birthday? She couldn't think. All she could manage was pull the blanket over the girl and leave as quietly and quickly as she could manage.

She had to make an effort to not make a sound. She almost stumbled and tripped down the stairs. It would have been disastrous. But Luka couldn't find it in herself to care. She forced her way through the floors, just barely managing to control her volume, and broke into the wine room. One bottle off of the rack, one trip to the kitchen and one escape to her sanctuary later, she tried to drown the emotions that threatened to drown her. She felt too much.

She didn't dream.

Only nightmares.


	4. Defeat

She felt uneasy: it had been a long time since she'd followed someone who didn't know she was there. That wasn't exactly what she minded, really. She'd done that often, before. But back then, she didn't tell someone else what she'd found out. There was a guarantee that whatever knowledge gained, no matter how private, would remain with her. This time, the man who had demanded she'd follow some other man knew who she was following, and she had given him a lot of information about him. For ten thousand scarab.

She was more wealthy than she'd ever been. She eyed her savings with surprise and a slight hint of self-disgust.

What bothered her the most was that the poor man she'd followed had done his very best to make sure he couldn't be followed. Unfortunately, she knew the city by heart. She knew where he was going.

Her email had another message; this time, it was an invitation.

* * *

Luka couldn't return to the house for a full week. Something had hit her where it hurt, but she couldn't describe what it was or why it affected her so. All of a sudden she felt unsure of her skills and was once again afraid of being spotted or found. The idea of merely lifting the grate to sneak into the basement made her shake. She wasn't quiet enough; she wasn't scary enough; she wasn't patient enough. She felt like Miku's persistence would outlast her, she felt like the girl would wear her down. Right then, she felt as vulnerable as Miku must have felt.

She felt watched, weak.

But she needed to go back. She needed to. No matter how much she hated the idea, no matter how much it made her shake, she had to go back and scare the girl. Maybe she wasn't far off, she told herself. Maybe she was close to winning.

So, she returned. At first, she was a true nightmare; the knocking, groaning and moving never stopped. But Miku bore it all, and Luka grew tired. She grew so tired.

One night, as she was sneaking into the basement, she spotted a pile of presents and was reminded of Christmas. She realized that she would have to celebrate with her parents. Instead of staying to haunt the girl, she made a U-turn and returned directly home. An hour later she had packed and was on her way to the airport. She was home before her mother could send her the invitation to the Christmas party.

She needed a break. After all, there was no deadline. After the holidays, she'd return stronger, better.

Her parents asked her numerous questions about her new job. Luka lied, saying that she was employed to check the tickets of passengers on buses and trains. She knew enough of the city to tell them of the monuments the public transport traveled to, and her parents ate it all up. And for a second, as she spoke her lies, she listened to herself and felt happy. For a split second she was happy in this fake reality in which she was allowed to travel around and see things. In her lie, she was free.

"See? You don't need to be a pop star to be happy!" Her mother had exclaimed at a given point.

No matter how hard she tried to say something, Luka had stayed silent.

* * *

Upon her return to her own home, Luka felt empty. She felt like her break hadn't lasted long enough, as if she should have taken more than two weeks of rest. Yet a part of her remembered the envelopes, the family and the girl she needed to haunt. She had to return.

She didn't waste a day, no matter how much she shook. She was back in the home that wasn't hers at five in the morning and listened as the father woke up, ate, showered and left. The moment he stepped out of the door, Luka managed to seize some of the confidence she'd gathered over time and climbed up the stairs.

It was still dark out since they were still in the middle of winter. Luckily for her, the two weeks away from practice hadn't made her skills wither, and she was still quiet, quick, and could almost perfectly distinguish shapes in the dark. Over Christmas and the New Year, very little had changed in the house. She saw a few new objects, such as a new lamp for the father's desk and a new painting in the living room on the second floor.

She was desperately holding on to her confidence, but the more steps she climbed, the closer she got to the girl, the more it fell apart and the more she realized that whatever had happened weeks prior was something jarring indeed. It shook her to the core.

Despite that, Luka managed to enter the girl's room in total silence, if not somewhat slower than before. Luka knew that Miku's sleep was deepest in the early morning, so she felt little fear in that regard.

The first thing Luka noticed was the new rug. It was blue, and it added a wonderful dash of color to the room. There were also curtains on the windows, which were drawn shut. She wondered what else the girl could have possibly gotten for Christmas when she already possessed so much and wanted so little. Maybe she'd wished for some rest. Unfortunately, peace wasn't given wrapped in a box, the intruder thought bitterly.

Luka crept closer to the sleeping figure, realizing that the feeling she felt was getting stronger as she approached. Only when she could see that Miku was still sleeping with a pillow, that she hugged on to so tightly, did she realize that she had a bitter taste in her mouth and a sharp knot in her gut.

Luka swallowed past the lump in her throat, unable to identify the new pain. She sat next to the bed, on the floor, so that her eyes were level with the sleeping girl's. She was frowning again. She was tense again.

The pain worsened. She couldn't believe she hadn't properly seen the girl evolve into this taught being. Her visits to her room were so sporadic, and usually only when Miku was elsewhere, awake. Nighttime visits were impersonal, as she visited in order to move something so that it might startle her upon waking up. She wouldn't look at the girl during those visits.

But then she had made the mistake of looking at her. And she had seen someone different from the girl she had first witnessed. There was an evolution she'd missed. She had been so focused, too driven, so goal-oriented, that she hadn't seen the real result of her havoc.

Of course, there were the behavioral clues, her growing nomadic tendencies even when she was 'alone' at home, her no longer getting warm milk when she couldn't sleep. But she saw those from behind a wall, or through the crack in the door. Even the moment of realization during Miku's birthday was short-lived. Looking at a girl's face and seeing her frown made her see exactly what she was: human.

She was so fragile. She was so delicate and innocent. She hadn't done a thing in all of her life. Yet Luka had tortured her without pause for months on end. She had operated like a machine. Meticulously careless, impersonal, she had dehumanized her victim and had acted without thought. Her life was entirely focused on making that girl on the other side of the wall talk to her dad about leaving. She didn't, or couldn't, realize that it was harming Miku.

She must have known to some extent, Luka told herself. I need to break her. I need to make her yell. I need to make her talk. I need to make her cry. But those were mere mission directives. Seeing her frown from so up close…

Regret. Guilt. So strong that Luka hadn't managed to recognize them together. The flavor was overpowering; the pain was crippling. It was unlike any consequence she had ever had to face before. It was a consequence so heavy for actions so cruel she hardly believed she had actually managed to behave in such a way for a such a long time.

She remembered how the girl had relaxed the last time Luka had been so close to her. Would she dare try to mend her actions by chasing the worries? Would she dare touch the girl again? She feared that she would wake up the moment she placed a finger on her head. Would—would the risk be worth it?

With a shaking hand, Luka again placed her thumb between the girl's eyebrows. Her fingers rested in her teal hair. She didn't dare apply any pressure at all. She didn't dare breathe.

And for some reason, Miku relaxed. Her grip softened, her expression evened out, and she let all the energy out with a sigh.

The next minute, Miku was slumbering peacefully. Luka didn't dare test it any further and pulled her hand back. She was sorry she couldn't do more. She was sorry that she'd already done too much. Most of all, she was sorry because she had to continue. The mere thought chilled her to the bone, paralyzing her.

Luka sighed as well, watching the girl sleep. She was so oblivious. The intruder shivered at her own actions; even as she tried to mend the wounds she'd caused, she was sinning. Spying on a harmless girl's slumber? Who did that?

She stood, rubbing her arms as if she could rub away her self-disgust. She thought of the envelopes, she thought of the mission, and she thought of Miku's relaxed sleep.

But she had to go on. She had to continue.

Her heart broke. She considered the wine collection briefly.

—

No, no, focus, focus.

She wished it would have stayed easy. She almost wished she'd never looked at Miku's sleeping figure, wished she'd never realized that she had been acting inhumanely. The consciousness of it was so heavy to wear. She drove her thoughts towards the mission only to realize that again she was growing a stone heart. No, she didn't dare forget how cruel she had been, was, and was supposed to be. If she was to make an innocent girl suffer, then how dare she not suffer alongside her.

That marked the start of a strange ritual of sorts. The first few days, Luka would continue to haunt the girl, and from the victim's perspective, nothing in the ghost's behavior had changed. It had simply let her be for the holidays and returned. Nothing more, nothing less. But after the sun would set and the father would go to bed, and Miku would finally, finally fall asleep, Luka would visit her and sit with her.

She never faced the girl, but she heard her breathe and she heard her toss and turn and whimper in her nightmares, and that was enough to remind her that she was a monster. She wouldn't touch her. She wouldn't bring comfort only to steal it when the sun rises. But she would listen to her cry, and she could feel her own heart break.

Somehow, this made continuing her daily actions a slight bit easier. She carried on with her mission with a cold efficiency, getting more and more cruel with the passing hour. She found comfort in the fact that she wasn't forgetting her own humanity, but most of all, she found strength in that fact that if there was no hell for her to rot in when she died, well, at least she did her best to rot while she was still alive. It wasn't for redemption, but it was to pay. She faced the consequences as best as she could, and she suffered them. It was the very best she could do.

One day, after Luka had turned on a faucet in order to lure the girl downstairs, Miku fell out of her pattern. The intruder watched from behind the basement door as the tealette just stared. She simply stared, nothing more, nothing less, as the water ran. She didn't shake, she didn't act, and Luka couldn't help but realize that something had gone horribly wrong somewhere. Miku always acted. Neutral, after a brief pause at most. But this? Luka frowned, not liking what she saw in the slightest. Fear returned, along with the bitter and biting guilt, hours before it was due.

Then, —almost aggressively— Miku stopped the flow of water. Silence returned to the household. And suddenly, out of nowhere, the girl started opening all of the cupboards. She threw most everything she found to the floor, felt the back of the cabinets.

Shit.

Miku ran into the living room, out of Luka's sight. The intruder could hear her search. She could hear her toss the table aside and open the closet.

Shit.

Luka dashed down the basement. Miku wasn't allowed to know that a person was behind all this. She wasn't allowed to know that she existed. She was supposed to be scared of an unknown threat, not a creep. She wasn't allowed to put a face, an appearance, even a species on the nature of her threat. It had to be alien. Supernatural. Godlike. Otherwise, she'd lose her edge.

She'd fail.

As the intruder pushed the window up she heard the basement door slam open. Oh, she felt the girl's line of sight graze her heels! As Miku devoured the stairs with loud steps and as Luka's heart drummed in her ears and throat, she jumped outside, frantically lifted the grate and jumped into the garden, letting the window slide shut behind her with an audible rattle.

Luka waited one minute behind the bushes. She almost forgot the gardens, but couldn't turn around and see if anybody was there even if she tried. She didn't dare check if Miku had looked to see if the grate was still there, she didn't even know if the girl knew there usually was one there. She waited two minutes. She didn't dare look inside the household to see if Miku had moved on upstairs. She waited three minutes. Only then did she dare quietly put the grate back over the hole in the garden. She patted down the soil so that it didn't look upset, and continued waiting.

She sat behind the roses for half an hour. Miku hadn't gone outside, probably because she hadn't seen reason to; the garden was quite empty and one could see all that was there from the windows—except when the intruder is hiding directly under them. Things might have calmed down. The few slamming doors she'd heard over the course of time had stopped. But Luka's heart never calmed down. She was so sorry.

So, so sorry.

Luka couldn't waste her time, though. Still shaking, with tears in her eyes and a weight in her gut, she crawled back inside.

No dirt, no tracks, never a clue that anybody was there.

On the stairs, she listened for a long time. There was no sound in the whole building. After opening the door and checking the first floor, she found that everything had been moved.

Miku had left absolutely no stone unturned. Cabinets had been pushed from the walls, rugs had been pulled, chairs tipped, tables dragged, bookcases emptied.

Luka wanted to return to her sanctuary, only to find that the girl had managed to pry open the cabinet somewhat. The door hadn't opened completely, but it wasn't completely flat against the wall. Even with the silicone spray, Luka had used her trusted knife, by then blunt, to ease it open every single time. It was very easy to open the door with a tool, and she imaged it could even be done with long enough nails. But the girl had tried and failed, probably judging, ultimately, that nobody would go there in the first place.

Luka wanted to weep.

Instead of simply crawling back into the dark and sleeping the memory away, she went upstairs. Miku wasn't there, but she had been there. The living room looked practically sacked. Her desk lost all of the organization it once had. She moved up another flight, and found that the father's desk had been pulled from the wall, but not much more. Luka checked in the parent's bedroom for the first time and saw that the bed had been undone and the closet doors were wide open.

Luka moved up to the fourth floor. A peek sufficed.

Miku was crying on her bed.

Her room was in shambles.

Luka wanted to die.

Instead, after allowing the image to be burned in her memory, she quietly went downstairs. When she reached the living room and Miku's desk she paused. After a moment, she turned towards the furniture. She set it straight. She put the paintings back and pulled the rug to where it was supposed to be. Decorations were placed on their respective surfaces, creases were smoothed out. It helped Miku clean up, and it was supernatural enough. Win-win, Luka thought grimly.

Luka then turned towards the girl's desk. She had no idea what kind of system Miku used to organize her things, so she merely gathered all of the random papers into a single, neat stack so that Miku could easily sort it all out afterward. Books were then placed in the bookcase, while the lamp, with the broken light bulb, was unplugged but put back on the desk.

Then she moved to the ground floor and proceeded identically there. Cupboards were shut, couches pushed against the wall, objects replaced in closets.

It was right then that Luka heard Miku's door shut and the stairs that led up to her room creak. Luka froze, ready to dash for the basement again. But she had to finish her clean up before Miku came down; unfinished work meant that a person had to be interrupted. Had the job been flawless it would have looked impressive enough to fear, as if was the doing of a supernatural force. Unfinished meant flaw. Flaw meant human.

Of course, she hadn't cleaned up the third floor, but Luka didn't care and maybe hoped that Miku would believe that the ghost just didn't want to be heard.

But Miku actually started cleaning up there, on that third floor. The moment Luka realized that she was going to be busy with her parent's room and her father's desk for at least ten minutes, she hurried to finish her clean up. The basement door was shut, objects picked up, details perfected.

The moment it was done, Luka pried open the small door to the hollow wall and dove right in. She pulled on the hook to close the door from the inside but hesitated. She thought, deliberated with herself, and then pulled it shut, but didn't pull it flush against the wall.

She didn't hear Miku come down the stairs from the third floor to the second floor but she heard her agitation grow, and heard her race down the final flight.

She was surprised to find everything back in its place. She looked everywhere, and Luka listened from under the stairs, right next to the little door, wondering if she really had to close it or not.

Miku went quiet, and Luka couldn't hear her anymore. No visual, no sound, Luka was left in the physical and mental dark with no clue as to where her hunter could be. Finally, she was the vulnerable one in the house, the one who anxiously awaited the next assault.

She was the prey.

Suddenly, the cabinet door was shut with a kick. Luka jumped, almost bumping her head against the stairs. Then she heard the girl stomp back up, probably going back to her room.

Luka sighed deeply. She realized she was shaking. Slowly, lethargically, she crawled towards her sleeping bag. She eyed the Tupperware with food that she had brought with her but felt no hunger.

She gave up on the day and fell asleep. A taste of blood rested on her tongue.

Later, that night, the intruder went upstairs as per usual. But the girl's room was still destroyed. Unlike with the other rooms, instead of simply setting aside or, in the worst case, flipping something on its side, it looked as if Miku had positively tossed her chairs and other objects across the space. Luka saw that a leg of her favorite chair had been broken, and she doubted that was the only case of real damage.

Did she dare clean up Miku's living space as she slept? Was she brave enough?

Luka decided that the fear and multiplied risk of getting caught was suitable punishment, if not enough. Calmly and soundlessly she put objects back in their place. She noted where pages had been torn or plastic cracked or parts broken. Damaged books were set in a small pile in front of the bookcase. The chair was set on its side, in its usual location. An audio dock for a certain phone brand had a snapped cable, so she unplugged it and set it aside, close enough to the rest of the similar equipment. But dismay filled Luka when she saw that the brand-new rug was stained by ink. She found the pen it had belonged to and saw with shy glee that the ink could be removed with a bit of effort. She took one of her spare shirts from downstairs, added soap and water, and rubbed at the stain until it disappeared. She didn't care about the shirt. If Luka had to break a person, at least she could make sure she didn't damage other things around her, and keep her surroundings presentable.

The cleanup had taken a fair bit of time, but Luka had all night. By the time she was done, dirty shirt in hand, it was only quarter past four.

Miku might wake up, Luka realized.

But she didn't. She had taken too long to fall asleep and would continue to slumber until late morning. Luka sat with her in the room, but for the first time in two weeks, she looked at the girl.

So tense, so distraught.

Luka couldn't and wouldn't touch her, she wouldn't try to give her a moment's peace just to rob it after sunrise. She left, crawled into her little hidden corner, and cried. She didn't even allow herself the peace alcohol could have given her.

The following day, Luka woke up late in the afternoon. She hadn't eaten in over a day, but there was no hunger, only nausea. She didn't want to move, she didn't want to act. So instead, she watched. All she could do was watch.

Briefly, she was reminded of how it was when Luka was fully invested in the job and could roam the house with Miku, and they'd never cross paths. It was similar, except that right then, she only watched, and it hurt.

She watched Miku read, she watched her walk around and make food and try to fix the things she broke. She watched her especially in her boredom; the girl had plenty of that.

Because Luka spent most of her time sneaking around, she hardly got to notice exactly how bored the girl usually was most of the day. She began to wonder if Miku had already read all of her books and if she was simply trying to entertain herself by reading everything again. She wondered if she only browsed the internet every so often because she envied this free world around her.

She also found herself observing little habits the girl had; when she read a book, she had to lie down. She usually, if not always, had a mp3 player on her but only listened to music half of the time. She brushed her hair a lot with anything she could reach, and she had absolutely no sweet tooth and preferred strong, salty and spicy foods.

When the day passed, Luka found herself more lost than ever. There was the task at hand, the mission she had to fulfill, and on the other hand, there was this person, this human, who was starting to seem so dear.

She had seen too much and didn't sit with Miku's tense sleep that night. She remembered why she never wanted to talk to the girl through the walls, why she wouldn't make a voice and call her a witch or something. Communication. It led to dialogue, to sharing, to emotions, to sentimental attachment. Somehow—somehow she had achieved that without the conversation. And it was completely one-sided, for the girl wasn't even certain that she existed.

She resumed the next day, no matter how bitter a taste it left on her tongue, or the sick weight it set in her stomach. At least, she planned to. While Miku was eating breakfast, she tried to knock once on the wall for a start. It was the most basic thing Luka had done, so much so that sometimes the girl hardly even reacted to it by then. So it was a great surprise when that time, a shrill cry echoed throughout the entire home, begging for it to stop. Please stop, she yelled. And then, Luka heard her collapse to the floor and cry.

Alone in the dark, behind a wall, Luka could only listen, powerless.

She wanted nothing more than to be able to stop. She wanted nothing more than the freedom to choose to stop. I will stop, she said. Rather, she moved her lips, without making a sound. Just tell your dad, and it'll all stop. Everything will end. This hell will become nothing more than a bad dream. I'll go home, and you'll go away, and we'll never hear of each other again. She wanted to be able to communicate all that to her but was unable to. She pressed her forehead against the rugged planks, hoping for the first time that Miku could feel that she was finally not alone.

Of course, she couldn't stop. She continued and every single time she acted, she felt like chopping her hand off. Luckily for her, the girl made it easy for her by remaining silent. She no longer reacted at all. Once again, she simply put things back and ignored the noises, as if in a state of severe denial. While there were no more reactions which tortured Luka so, the thinking almost hurt more. What was going on in Miku's head? Did she think that she was going insane despite the multitude of physical manifestations? Was she on the edge of breaking? Would she tell her dad the next day? Did she hate her? Did Miku hate her? That thought hurt so much, because Luka wanted the girl to hate her, but never knew if she got the resentment she so deserved.

The lack of reaction allowed Luka to sit with her once again. It hurt to see the girl's troubled sleep, but it was a pain she felt that she fully deserved. That, along with the never-ending hunger. Along with the lips and cheeks, she had bitten 'til they bled, 'til all she could taste was her own blood. She forced herself to gaze upon the tortured being she had created and she let herself cry silent tears, begging silently for the girl to give in. Just give in, she whispered. Please. Free us both.

But despite every tortured night, and despite every ragged day, Miku never talked. Luka was forced to continue her haunting. She only hoped to suffer as much as her victim. She never hoped that she hadn't gone too far for redemption, for she knew that she'd crossed the line long ago.

Those nights had a severe downside that Luka wished she could have foreseen: she feared that there was a countdown, suddenly. Yes, a clock was ticking, time was running out. A threat that didn't seem to exist at first formed itself in Luka's mind, and suddenly it all had to end soon. Too soon. She felt that she had to return to Miku and give her the worst of everything, except she had already done all she could think of. But the girl had to give in! She had to give in, because if Miku wouldn't, then Luka would.

One evening, she was home for barely an hour, but was already preparing her return to her hellish den, planning her nightmares to finally end it all. She was stopped, though, when she noticed that she had a message on her phone. It was Lily, who planned to come over to celebrate her birthday.

To celebrate her twenty-second birthday almost felt like that kind of activity was for another life, another existence altogether. What kind of regular schmuck didn't celebrate their birthday, and what kind of monster did? After all, monsters were timeless, ageless atrocities who thirsted after the innocent, and she felt so detached from time and life itself, she hardly felt alive. She had forgotten about her own birthday and had never had so little desire to celebrate anything ever. A birthday party? Such silly, superfluous nonsense. She didn't have time for that. Most importantly, she shouldn't have lived her past year. Better yet, she hadn't lived her past year.

She could only frown at hearing her best friend's voice as she planned her 'newest bestest day of your life.' No matter what celebration she threw for her latest success in not dying for 365 consecutive days, she could only think of every occasion at which she almost died, could have died, should have died. She should have been caught on day one and shot with a gun right in her face. After all, because that hadn't happened, she was allowed to continue her job all throughout spring, summer, fall and—

It was only then that Luka realized that it was going to be almost a year since she first broke into the Hatsune residence, and the thought struck her so hard it was dizzying. She sat down on her bed, absorbing the fact that she had spent almost a year torturing someone, and that someone had managed to withstand her all that time.

A full year! Twelve months, each with thirty days. Her head spun and she felt sick. And most of that time she had been so heartlessly ruthless, and too much of that time she had worked with a broken heart.

And Miku? Oh, poor Miku. The poor soul. What word would properly fit her situation? Trauma? Paranoia? Mental degradation, destruction? Nothing about the entire situation was healthy in the slightest, and it had been going on for almost a year. With how stubborn the girl was being, Luka feared that there was no end in sight.

But she had to finish it soon. She had to make it all end soon. She had to make it so that Miku would end it all soon. She had to break her into a thousand little bits and make her collapse in front of her own father. It would be the best for all of them. It truly would.

Luka sat on her bed for an hour and a half, simply thinking. She allowed tears to run down her cheeks and fall onto her knees. She allowed her back to ache and her lip to bleed. She allowed her heart to break and her soul to crumble. She didn't answer Lily's call.

She returned to the Hatsune residence with a steel heart and a fixed goal in mind, only to go home mere hours later, weaker than ever before. Miku was too strong and too neutral and too tense in her sleep. Luka had watched her and scared her and had broken down again and again in the dark, alone.

Miku was so stoic. But how well she truly was faring was a question that never left the intruder's mind. To have a year of solitude among eighteen others spent harassed and assaulted and haunted. How was that? No matter how unimaginably unbearable it was, it was all Luka's own doing.

She wondered if it would be her undoing, and hardly doubted that it would be.

She wanted to call Lily back and tell her to stay away. Stay away from the monster. But of course, she said that the blonde was welcome and that she looked forward to seeing her again.

Luka wondered how her best friend would react if she found out what she'd been doing all day, every day, for almost a year. She imagined how her friend's face would contort, how she would be hit, how she would be shunned. Knowing Lily, she would let everyone in the world know about her crimes, and she would get the same treatment from everyone she knew, and everyone she didn't. She'd see Miku's face finally recognize who had violated her so, and see it crumble into tears.

She couldn't take it.

That weekend, Luka expected a cozy dinner with Lily to celebrate the worst event of the year. Except Lily didn't come alone; her parents joined the blonde, as well as her other friends, some of which she hadn't seen since the end of high school. For a second, and only a second, Luka was bathed in some sort of bittersweet surprise and nostalgia at seeing so many familiar faces smile at her. That second ended with a swift and cruel reminder that she didn't deserve a single second of joy, not a single smile, and Luka's entire face turned into a stone mask. The mask was layers thick and had the brightest smile and the most shimmering eyes painted on it. Nobody could see through it, and under the mask, Luka's heart broke again.

With faux smile armed and light laughter at the ready, they celebrated. The whole group, twenty strong, went to a nice restaurant. They joked and laughed and ate cake. The cake made Luka want to gag. It looked so beautiful and sweet and delicious that she wanted to tear it apart with her bare hands. The conversation wasn't better; Luka was reminded of numerous fun anecdotes they'd all experienced together but couldn't bring up a single one herself. She was told numerous jokes and laughed plenty, but couldn't get a giggle from anyone. She blamed the surprise and the sudden joy at seeing everyone again. She blamed her job and how wonderfully tiring it was. They bought it all.

She felt sick to the stomach.

After dinner, they all went to her little home, and Luka was just happy she'd put everything away. Her mother and father were so proud of how well she managed on her own, complimenting her room, small as it was. Luka took the compliments easily if only to subdue her horror. It was clean because she was never around to allow her presence destroy it.

Another cake was summoned. It was smaller and more personal. A little pink octopus decorated each corner, and twenty-two candles covered the top. It had layers of vanilla and lemon, they said. It was her favorite. Luka could only imagine how delicious it would be and how much effort she would have to make to keep herself from spitting it all back up.

They sat her at her own table and lit all of the little blue candles. In each flame, she saw her reflection and in each drop of wax, she saw Miku's tears. She knew that, even as she sat there at home with her family and friends, she consumed the girl's life.

Make a wish, they said.

They sang for her and cheered for her and all she wanted to do was run.

Make a wish, they said.

I wish that Miku could be happy again.


	5. Ruin

Luka had never been more uncomfortable in her entire life and could not imagine any other situation as bad as the one she was in. Fool that she was, she accepted the invitation, only because once again, there was a promise for thousands of scarab. Where did all this money come from? She was optimistic, at first; she was told to go to a bakery. Unfortunately, that bakery had a basement, where she was blindfolded, led outside, put in a car, and driven somewhere else. The next thing she saw was mostly darkness. That didn't bother her; she was used to the dark by then. It was the desk, the television, the man standing so close behind her she felt his arm brush her back as he breathed, and the man sitting across from her, that made her uncomfortable.

"You are exceptionally good," started the man in front of her. She couldn't make out his face: the television behind him showed a bright white screen, making it impossible to see anything about him other than his silhouette.

The television suddenly flickered and proceeded to show security footage of a street she knew. It paused, and a circle appeared around an individual. She recognized him: it was who she had followed.

"You stuck to him like glue. You found his destination flawlessly. Yet, I can't find you in the film." A pause. Then, he slowly inhaled, and in a single puff of air, gave a command:

"Explain."

A map of the area was nudged towards her, the fingers pushing it encased in gold rings. She chuckled nervously, wanting to resort to bad humor to get out of her anxiety. But the bull of a man stoically looming over her made her hesitate. Instead, she leaned over the map and pointed.

"That street ends at a park. Before that, and for quite a while, there's only a single street branching to the left. It's a long, narrow street. Here, I took a shortcut through the stores on the right-hand side. If he had gone to the park, I would have gotten there first. If he hadn't, he could have only gone down the long street, which was the case. It wasn't difficult to backtrack fifty meters and see which house he entered from a distance."

"How did you find those shortcuts?"

"I followed someone else through them a few months ago."

An uneasy silence filled the room. The map was pulled back, folded, and put away.

"You are talented."

"Thank you."

The man then opened a drawer. Luka feared a gun, drugs, or anything dangerous. Instead, there was an envelope.

"You will take this envelope home. You will see how much is in there. We will write to your address, and you will reply to the address written in the letter. We will send you missions, and you will return answers. For your replies, you will use only the paper and envelope included in the letter we send you. For every answer, you will get the amount in this envelope. You are to keep the money in cash form. You will hide it."

Luka peered at the envelope uneasily.

"What's the job?"

He took his hand off of the envelope. The screen flickered, showing a series of pictures. A few of a man, a few of a woman, and only two of a young girl, probably ten, both of which were taken through windows of a plane.

"This is the Hatsune family. He is rich. She is rich. And they are an obstacle. They moved here. We want them out."

Luka nodded slowly.

"The little one, she is seventeen now. Her parents? They love her very much."

Luka swallowed heavily.

"How good are you at hiding in enclosed spaces?"

"I— I once did a job for this guy who wanted me to haunt this old house. He couldn't find me."

"Very good."

"Except!" she trailed off for half a second, only to regain her resolve, despite the beast behind her. "I could go to the house in advance back then. I learned the layout before he got there. If you want me to hide in their house—"

"You will hide in their house. And you will chase them out."

Luka felt her breath catch. "I don't do those kinds of jobs! This isn't what I signed up for!"

The man merely chuckled. Luka sat nervously on the edge of her seat, ready to run for it. She couldn't see his eyes, she couldn't see his face. She couldn't see his thoughts.

He pushed the envelope towards her. She refused to take it.

"You did not sign up for this, but you will. You don't do those kinds of jobs, but you are fully capable." Again, he breathed in, audibly, and spoke his next sentence in a single breath, very slowly, so Luka wouldn't miss a single syllable.

"You are the best at this."

"Why not hire some lunatic?! I'm sure the deep web has plenty of freaks who are willing to do this for less than whatever is in there," she spat, nodding towards the envelope.

The man shook his head.

"Those people online are sloppy. They are far away. They are crazy. They are fickle. You are here. You are sane. You are normal. You are the best. And you like money very much."

"Sure, I like money. But, I also like respecting people's private lives. Telling you guys where the father lived was a mistake."

"Now," the man sighed. "Do you know what you love the most?"

What Luka loves the most? Tuna, surely, she thought. Doing things legally, for sure.

The screen flickered. She saw the faces of her parents, of her friends. The pictures were taken while they were in parks, driving in cars, from outside while they were cooking.

"You love these people. Don't you."

* * *

Everything went into a downward spiral after Luka's birthday. Nothing helped in any way. Miku was stubborn, Luka couldn't think of any new tricks, and the letters kept coming. Somehow, Luka knew that there was an invisible clock ticking. Tick-tock tick-tock and nothing ever stopped. She was so close to giving up. Every day she thought she might snap but no, she somehow managed to keep going, and Miku did, too.

Luka pushed through her feelings just to get it over with. She ignored her tears and her pain just to scare her already. It would be better for the both of them in the long run if she finally succeeded, right? Of course, Luka didn't let herself grow numb: she sat with the tealette, hurting every time she could; she would lean against the closest wall to the kitchen and cry with Miku as she ate breakfast; she would cry in the basement as she heard Miku sob all the way from the fourth floor; she tried to let the girl know that she wasn't alone, even though she probably had never felt more alone in her entire life.

But nothing worked. Luka had played all of her cards, even writing on the walls at a given point, but Miku wouldn't give in. The year anniversary rolled by as winter melted to spring. Luka had forgotten how hot the hollow got on sunny days, and had traded her local wardrobe to much lighter clothes. The extra preoccupations didn't help. Nothing helped.

Another thing had changed. A few days into February, Miku's father started working even longer hours. _You're an adult now, Miku. You can manage a few days on your own_. As the months went by, he only returned for weekends and maybe, if the girl was lucky, on Wednesdays. Would his rare presence encourage her to confide in him while he was there? No, Miku wouldn't talk. Not even when he would leave for weeks at a time, leaving her to cry, all alone, as Luka knocked on the walls and toppled furniture. She never, ever talked about her ghost, even as her sleeping pattern changed, going to sleep later and later and getting up later still.

One day, a terrifying and somehow welcome realization plummeted Luka back into a machine-like efficiency: she had realized that she was getting sloppy when she found strands of her hair in the carpets. She hadn't been tying her hair, and from that, she speculated that she'd failed to cover her own tracks. The thought terrified her so much that her heart hurt her, biting against her ribs. She forgot everything she was supposed to do just to make sure that she was again invisible. She inspected everything, she made sure that everything was perfect, from her hair, to the clothes she wore, her footprints, fingerprints, even the tools she used. She didn't leave a trace behind. Surfaces were wiped down, splinters pulled from her shirts, dust removed from her knees. The very last traces of her existence were removed by Miku's own hand, after a weekend of vacuum cleaning. The moment her revision was over, however, the moment that she was sure that she was totally invisible once more, the blessing of the rigid mentality left her, and the guilt returned with a vengeance. _Look how much you try to make sure you can hurt as much as possible. Look at how good you are at this._ With her heart exposed, she managed to melt again, feeling her patience run out, her morals deteriorate, her sanity run dry.

But she couldn't stop. Not with what was at stake.

And so, it went on for another few weeks. Spring gave way to summer.

A few days before Miku's nineteenth birthday, Miku had asked where the little cabinet door by the stairs led to. Luka had completely frozen at that point. She'd forgotten that the poor girl knew about the little door under the stairs. Luckily for her, the tealette had only received a shrug in response, for Luka had heard no word except for Miku's dejected little 'oh'.

The intruder became paranoid, though. Miku hadn't forgotten the little door even after all of that time. Was she starting to catch on? Did she understand that she wasn't crazy and was looking for clues to find her stalker? Would she soon start to put up video surveillance, or she'd start picking up hair from the floor to inspect their color?

Luka removed everything she'd moved into the hollow over the months: a few pillows, a sleeping bag, spare clothes. In one night, the entire place was as empty as the day she'd found it, minus dust. From then on, she hid in different places all the time, avoiding patterns. If Miku knew of the cabinet door, then her sanctuary was lost.

The very next day, Miku did pry open the cabinet. She used the same knife Luka had used to open it on day one. Or was it day two?

Luka couldn't see this happening; she was one floor higher, hiding under the couch with the very long tussles. But she heard Miku as she 'ooh'-ed and 'aah'-ed at the empty space. It echoed through the walls, and she could be heard on the two floors the hollow covered.

How would she have reacted if she'd found her there? Her pillows, her clothes? Luka knew that she'd dodged a bullet and knew that she had just lost her only refuge.

She consequently abandoned the nightly sitting together ritual and went home every night. By then, she knew which roads were covered by traffic cameras and how to avoid them. There would be no record — at all — of her coming and going between homes on a regular basis. She also knew to vary her trajectory, so that no witnesses could notice her regularity.

This left Luka alone at home. She found some happiness in being able to return to her own place on a regular basis. Having her own bed instead of a sleeping bag was a definite plus. But she couldn't make progress with Miku, and she couldn't keep an eye on her sleep.

Somehow, that was something she sorely missed. She found absolutely no joy in watching her tense sleep but found a responsibility in seeing the consequences of her actions. She owed it to her victim. She owed her the self-punishment.

Then Miku's birthday did come. Just like the previous year, both mother and father were there and made it a job of staying with their little girl all day long. And Luka stayed as well, but it wasn't to see if she would finally talk, because somehow she knew, by then, that she would never talk. Miku wouldn't ever tell them of her ghost. She wouldn't ever break. So she stayed — if only to see the girl smile. Maybe, if she was lucky, she'd actually hear her laugh. Did Miku ever laugh?

Luka ignored the mission directives, simply enjoying seeing her happy for once. She left her alone, letting her open her presents (one of which a new dock for an mp3 player, the one she'd broken in her vain search for the intruder), letting her go outside and letting her have fun. She let her smile. Meanwhile, Luka hid under the very furniture the family sat on. Maybe she'd get caught. After all, one of them would have to lose at one point or another. And if Miku managed to stay tight-lipped for a year, then maybe it was about time Luka lost.

But she couldn't lose. Luka reprimanded herself when the day was done, reminded herself of the stakes. She had to stay on the winning side.

She'd never win, though, that much she knew. And so, the game was doomed to continue forever.

One week after Miku's birthday, Luka allowed herself to sit by her again before going home.

Somehow, she'd worsened.

Miku didn't sleep with a blanket anymore. She didn't sleep with a hug-pillow anymore. She didn't use a pillow at all. She slept, curled in a ball, head pressed against the wall, hugging herself.

Maybe she'd tried to sleep like a normal human being, but pillow and blanket were thrown to the floor in her slumber.

Luka never should have missed the transition. She reprimanded herself — again — through her tears. How dare she lose track of how much of a monster she was. How dare she.

How dare she.

As she crept down the stairs, the inside of her mouth chewed to shambles, Luka had half the mind to think of her old favorite hiding place. She found that a small doorknob had been fastened to the outside of the cabinet, and felt her heart sink.

The inside had been polished up. Everything was cleaner than Luka had ever managed; after all, she couldn't dare bring a vacuum cleaner in there. Not even a broom, for she feared that the manifestation of all of the dust would spark confusion. But Miku had cleaned everything. When? She didn't know.

Inside, way at the northern end of the western wall, she found a little lamp and a journal. The lamp was powered by a battery, and the journal had a pen clipped to the spine.

She didn't dare open it. She couldn't open it. Luka fled the scene, knowing fully well that what used to be her tool of terror had become Miku's new refuge. What used to hide Luka now shielded the girl from her.

As she walked home, Luka wondered when Miku ever used that space. She knew where the girl went during the day and knew that she never went in there. Had it become her knew nightly habit? It had to be.

Of course, what she actually wrote in the journal was another question. But the job didn't call for reading her most private thoughts.

Luka stopped.

Unless her thoughts revealed what she needed to do to scare her. Maybe it would let her know exactly how close she was to letting them both free. Maybe it held all of the secrets she needed to know.

For a few days, Luka hesitated. Should she read the journal? Should she simply continue with her numerous shots in the dark, grasping for victory in vain? One sleepless night among countless others, Luka decided that she would read the book. She would go to the home early and read the journal while Miku went on with her day. She might find the very information she needed. If the journal contained nothing of use, then she would take the stolen knowledge to her grave.

But the next morning she changed her mind completely. A diary! She wanted to read someone's personal diary! How dare she?! Was she truly going to stoop so, so low? She was disgusted by herself, a true disgust that stole her appetite and crippled her with knots in her gut, the only thing filling her mouth every minute being her own blood — cheeks and lips bitten raw. If young, innocent, nineteen-year-old Luka could see her at that moment, what would she think of her? And what taste would rest on her tongue when she would be old, crippled maybe, and could do nothing else but remember these months again, and again? The entirety of the situation caught up to her and she wanted out, out, she wanted to go away and never return. But the stakes suffocated her, keeping her there like a tight leash. There was too much to lose.

It was with an angry movement that she tore open the newest envelope. She had all of the time in the world: Miku woke up around noon every single day, knowing that dear daddy wouldn't be home anyways, that she only had another nightmare to wake up to. But the envelope enraged her. They'd become so rare lately, how dare it come back just right that day? That day when she was so angry at herself, at everything? It was with rage that she eyed the contents, just barely managing to stop herself from ripping it to pieces before reading it.

But then she wished that she'd never woken up that morning. A minute passed. Two minutes. She should have been killed in her sleep by some random chance, some rare disease, by a random serial killer. She ran to her bathroom and allowed herself to be violently ill.

Time was up, but not because she had finally given up.

She hadn't been good enough.

Time was up.

Two sentence were written in the letter.

And Luka wanted to die.

She stayed in her bathroom all day long. She didn't eat. That night, she didn't sleep. The next day, she wrote a reply. She drank some water only to spit that back out with the same violence and pain.

Then, when the sun set, she headed for the Hatsune residence. He wasn't going to return for another five days.

She didn't have five days.

The entire walk, Luka was as numb as she could be. The nail of her thumb kept pushing under her other nails through the glove with a flick — until it hurt. She chewed the inside of her cheek regardless of the blood. Like copper, iron. Metallic. Heavy. It settled into her stomach, and she wouldn't let it leave that time.

She walked aimlessly for hours. When three o'clock passed, Luka finally decided to stop stalling. Oh, what would she have said, if she had been able to know what she would do that day. How would she remember that day in the years to come.

She wondered.

The inside of her mouth was raw. She felt skin hang from the walls of her mouth by strands. Maybe her fingers were bleeding. Her back hurt; she wasn't walking straight. Her head hung; she couldn't look ahead.

Tick-tock, tick-tock.

Luka could just as well have fallen apart. The grate wasn't placed back where it was supposed to be. She didn't bother kicking the dirt from her shoes, so it spread all over the basement floor. She knew that her footprints where there. She didn't care. She couldn't care. She could only be painfully and entirely aware of everything around her. The moon shone blue that night, basking everything around her in pale grayish light. The basement still smelled musty, and tasted like plastic on her bloody tongue.

She heard only her own breathing. It was ragged. It was tired. She was panting despite walking at a slow pace. It was her thoughts. It was her twitching and her breathing and her looking around all of the time that made her so tired already. So, so tired.

Her fingers twitched. Her gloves felt stiff. Dried blood? Her tears? She ached all over.

She climbed the stairs. The temperature went up with her. The taste changed to match the smell; clean, somewhat soapy. Some vanilla.

Nothing moved.

She heard only her own breath.

She eyed the ground floor. The first floor of a home she had grown so, too, accustomed to. Everything was in its place.

The cabinet door. The journal. Read it? No, pointless now. Too late, now.

Tick-tock tick-tock.

She climbed the next set of stairs. Nobody was home. For the first time, she allowed her weight to sink into the wooden planks under the carpeting. She allowed it all to creak. Let it all creak and crumble around her and under her. No point in hiding anymore.

The second floor. Living room, desk. The desk that was too big. The damned desk. That floor was brighter, somehow. It hurt Luka's eyes. Everything hurt.

Chewing on her cheek. More skin hanging in her mouth. She tried to catch the strands with her teeth. Blood.

She didn't like blood. She tasted it all the time, she realized. It was always there. She didn't like blood.

She found the linen closet in the living room. It was too full to hide in. She'd almost forgotten where it was, before. But right then she knew. She took a pillow. It was big and fluffy. Comfortable.

She hurt all over. But her gloves didn't stain the pillows red. Maybe she wasn't bleeding. The pain only increased at the thought.

Another flight of stairs. Tick. Creak. Tock.

The office and the parent's bedroom. Empty. Organized. Smelled of ink and old paper. The books were old. They got to grow old. How old? Older.

The pillow knocked something over. Maybe a trashcan. It fell with a thud against the rug. New rug. Christmas? She had forgotten. Or maybe never noticed. It muted her footsteps. She sunk into it. It silenced her. She noticed it now. Barely.

The clock showed half-past three.

The next stairs creaked more. Much more. She let her weight sink in. The blood in her mouth tasted more bitter than before. As yes, she'd just bitten into her cheek again. Skin hanging. Couldn't catch it with her teeth. She wanted to pull it out with her fingers. Later.

Miku's bedroom. Large. Empty. So much money everywhere. Stereo, computer, mp3 players. All brands. All colors. So much boredom. So much wealth. So much sadness.

She sank her fingers into the pillow. Miku's blanket was on the floor. Her pillow was on the floor. It was flimsy. From misuse.

Tick-tock.

All Luka saw was the room, basked in blue. All she smelled was the everlasting new carpet and vanilla.

Vanilla cake.

Blood.

Miku tossed and turned. Tick-tock.

Luka only felt the fabric of the pillowcase strain in her grip. It groaned the silent groan tissues make when stretched just not far enough to rip. A groan that was felt more than heard. It made her fingers tremble a little more than they already did.

Tick-tock.

Luka only tasted the blood in her mouth.

One step forward. Another second.

Luka only heard Miku's soft breathing. In. Out.

Out.

Stop. Gotta stop it.

She approached the bed slowly.

Stop it all. Need to win. Win. End it, stop it.

The pillow felt heavy.

The stakes, Luka. The stakes.

Stop it. Stop it stop it stop it the breathing.

Blood in her mouth.

Miku tossed again. She was no longer pressed against the wall. On her back, hugging herself. Legs no longer curled against her.

Now! NOW!

Luka wanted to lunge forward. Her mind was racing but her movements were glacial. End it. Stop it. Slow down, be quiet. Quieter, silent, now, now, now!

One knee on the bed. The mattress sank. Pillow in two hands. The fabric was stressed beyond repair. The second knee. The mattress sank. Miku was under her. Breathing. In out. Tense. Everybody, tense.

Luka let her weight sink in.

Miku didn't notice. She hadn't ever noticed her, had she.

Too late, too late, too late.

Tick-tock.

Too close, Luka thought. Too close. Closer. Closer. Closer.

The pillow came down with a slam.

You need to kill her, Luka. You failed, Luka. You're too slow.

You

Failed.

She felt Miku move under her. She felt her knees hit her. She felt the exact moment Miku realized that she was going to die. That flinch. That muffled scream.

Luka only let her weight sink in.

Hands pulled at her wrists. Luka felt them catch on her gloves, scratch her skin. She felt how Miku realized that it was real and not a nightmare and that she needed to do her _very best_. She felt her writhe and try so so hard to get her off.

Luka let herself sink in deeper.

Nails in her wrists. Not enough. Time was passing. Five seconds. Heels against her back. Miku was trying everything. She was trying trying trying so hard to push her off but Luka was stronger, heavier. She let herself push the air out of Miku's face and lungs. Push harder. Harder.

Not enough, Miku. You'll need to try harder, flail more. You'll need to writhe and suffer and suffocate.

Luka didn't flinch when she got slapped and punched in the face. Miku went on the offensive. Again, again. Burning pain. Cuts in her wrists. Hanging skin. Blood in her mouth.

She let herself sink in deeper still. She felt Miku's face through the pillow. She felt her shake and try again and again and again.

Miku turned her head, and got in a single stray breath. Luka seized her face through the pillow, held her in place. The hands were back at her wrists, the legs were kicking her again. Keep trying. Always trying. Push harder. Try harder. Kick to the spine. Dull pain. Everywhere. It hurt.

Time kept going by. Tick-tock, Miku. How long can you last? A full year? This is what a year of silence gave you, Miku. Would it have killed you to say something? Would it?!

And suddenly, all of the volume in Luka's mind went dead. Silence filled her and the room around her. Luka breathed deep, ragged breaths, her hands still in the pillow, back arched as she pushed with all of her strength.

She relaxed somewhat, blinking away some sort of mental fog. She noticed the hand that had gripped her shoulder like a vice. The fingers were wrapped around the cloth of her shirt, tightening the collar around her throat. The other hand was on her arm, the grip weakening.

Then both fell to the mattress.

Luka jumped back, releasing the pillow. She relaxed despite herself, and looked at the limp body before her.

Inhale.

Exhale.

Luka blinked again. She stared at the girl, the face hidden under the pillow, the arms haphazardly strewn across the bed.

Luka realized that she burned with a thousand bruises and a thousand cuts. Miku had kicked and clawed and stretched and pushed.

And now she was dead.

Luka stood from the bed, shaking so much, too much. She fell, still trying to catch her breath. A breath Miku couldn't get. She ached all over, small pains Miku wouldn't ever have to feel again.

She turned around, and saw a sight that should have killed. Miku's eyes, still open, empty, staring at her from under the pillow.

The eye contact was brief. Fatal. Luka could only turn and half stumble, half sprint to the bathroom, the toilet, to throw it all out. Her entire body screamed, her muscles clenched to just empty the contents of her stomach, of herself, into the toilet bowl. She gripped the porcelain, her skin screaming, her nerves on fire, her hands bloodied.

The water turned red. There was nothing left to give, yet still her body contracted, her muscles squeezing her stomach, her abs constricting her, she was constricting herself, just to give more. She felt like she wanted to heave out her heart, or a lung. She gagged and groaned but nothing came, just the tears from her eyes, the saliva from her tongue and the blood from her lips.

When the muscles in her abdomen stopped trying to squeeze the life from her, all she could do was cry. All she could do was hug the porcelain and sob, face to face with the disgusting reddish fluid she'd forced out of herself. Tears broke the image of her face. Her reflection, truly, she figured.

Now what? Go home? Resume a normal life? Get a job? Buy a nice house? Slowly but surely spend those millions that had gathered under her couch? Pretend that all that had never happened?

She'd have to avoid all of the news reports. She'd have to act surprised. She'd have to sit in conversations and pretend to learn something. Pretend that she wasn't the one who did it. She could hear it already.

Who would murder a nineteen-year-old girl in her sleep? What a monster.

Monster. Murderer. Stalker.

The parents, oh. Daddy would find his little girl when he returns in five days. He would call Mommy, then the police. She would race in from whatever continent she was in. What do you mean our daughter is dead? It's not true, sweetheart, is it? She's not really dead, right? Is this some ploy to get me to stay home more? You're not funny, honey. Stop it. Stop lying to me. Stop.

And then the two parents would be forced to look at their dead little girl. The girl who lived without a life, imprisoned in a home. Maybe they would realize, then, that it had been 19 wasted years. The rage would fill them. Find whoever stopped her from being able to continue her life, make it her own. Whoever had made them realize that they had screwed up. They wouldn't ever give up, not even when all the traces go cold. Maybe there would be books written about it, encouraged by the fire of their rage and the never healing burn of their sorrow.

Or maybe she would get caught. A witness here, a fingerprint there, a hair over there, and she would open the door to a couple of police officers. They would question her, search her apartment, find the money. The news headlines would cover the country, the world. Her family would refuse. Her friends would deny. The Hatsune parents, wounded beyond the imaginable, would hate her guts, her face. What would she do, then?

Admit it, she thought without a second's hesitation. Look everyone in the eye and say 'I did it'. Then she would hang herself in her cell, or jump from a building because the death penalty wasn't a thing where she lived, but it was all she deserved. No matter what, she would end up walking out of that courtroom disappointed in the punishment set for her, determined that it wouldn't be enough. She might run out of the building, inviting a couple of gunshots to her back. She'd bleed out, or be saved in a hospital. She'd try again. Again.

Maybe, if there's an afterlife, she would find Miku and apologize. Explain. Say that she would like to be friends with her, or sure, spend the rest of eternity avoiding each other, that's ok, too. Whatever you want, Miku.

If things had been different, if Miku had given in and the family had gone, Miku might have returned to this city, years later. See what she had missed. Luka, by then, could be married, with kids. The entire ordeal but a bad memory. She would recognize the girl of teal, with her hair, her eyes. Hello, how are you? What's your name? Are you new around here? Let me give you a tour. Meet my husband, my children. I'll be here should you need anything. Whatever you want, Miku.

Whatever you want.

But it was too late for all of that. Too late. Luka stared at her reflection, sitting on the cold tile in the dark. The tears wouldn't stop.

If she thought that the guilt and regret had been bad before, then they were murderous right then. She could barely breathe. It paralyzed her. All she wanted right then and there was to rewind, rewrite everything. Never post that thing online, never start. She would have never met Miku, and that would have been fine.

Murder, murderer. She was a murderer. She had killed Miku. Somehow the thought stopped making sense. Of all the things she could have done, she could do, killing Miku was the very last thing she felt she was capable of. She didn't want to kill her. No, she wanted to show her the world, show her the outside, the weather, the people, the animals. Show her what a conversation was like, or a night out. The shopping, the dancing. She wanted to make the girl smile, to hear her laugh.

Had she ever heard Miku laugh? No. No, she hadn't.

And Miku would never laugh again. Luka tried to imagine what it could have sounded like. Light, pleasant. If something would take her by surprise, then she might yell or squeak. Something cute, something charming.

But it was useless. She wouldn't get to hear it. Ever. Her body was breathless in the other room, in the dark.

Luka looked at her gloved hand. She saw the blood stain the black fabric, but knew it wasn't really there. She saw the act written on her skin, through the glove, like a permanent fluorescent tattoo. This hand has taken a life. I'm a guilty conscience, a guilty soul. A walking, living sin.

She figured that maybe — with time — she would be able to cope with it. Or learn how to hide it better. Maybe she'd manage to destroy herself with drugs or alcohol and when she dies from that, nobody would be the wiser. She was such a happy girl, right? So smart, so bright. She remembered her conversation with Lily, oh so long ago, and could almost laugh at it all.

"Bigger than this."

She sighed, finally managing to calm down somehow. With every muscle that loosened, her heart broke some more. She'd need a few weeks just to learn to deal with it, after this low passes. The next morning, she'd wake up screaming, not wanting it to be true, she thought. Right then, it was just the calm after and before the storm. The nightmare would begin soon. But at that moment, she welcomed the deceitful tranquility, and stared at the dark water, her unclear reflection. It stank. She was uncomfortable. But she was alone.

The light turned on.

END PART 1


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